


The Grip of It

by Seek_The_Mist



Category: Raven Cycle - Maggie Stiefvater
Genre: 5+1 Things, Accidental Voyeurism, Awkward Sexual Situations, Blow Jobs, Cuddling & Snuggling, Dry Humping, Exhaustion, Grief/Mourning, Grinding, Guilt, Hand Jobs, Intimacy, M/M, Magic, Overworking, Post-The Raven King, Sharing a Bed, Shower Sex
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-10-21
Updated: 2017-03-09
Packaged: 2018-08-23 20:53:32
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 39,122
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8342317
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Seek_The_Mist/pseuds/Seek_The_Mist
Summary: The quest for Glendower ends in an explosion of shattered lives, shattered dreams and shattered realities, leaving five teens in the debris with all the loose ties. Ronan and Adam barely had something standing during the supernatural madness. It's not straightforward to figure out what they have and how they deal with it outside of it.Intimacy is everything but trivial.    A. k. a. : Five times intimacy was an awkward and tentative thing + one time it was absolutely glorious.





	1. The Aftermath

**Author's Note:**

> This work was meant to be a sort of "the adorable awkward sexy times collections everyone wants!".
> 
> Instead, since it's me writing it, became a sort of "let's construct what happens between the end and around the epilogue in a delirious mess of head canons and over-analysed Pynch moment - but sexy times still happen".
> 
> I hope you still enjoy it! 
> 
> Tags will be updated with every new chapter added and I will try to update every 10 days or so.
> 
> I have no words to convey how invaluable [Luz](http://archiveofourown.org/users/Luz) has been in bringing this first multi chapter madness to life. Her betaing was spot on and the discussion made it all even more worth it. I'll cry you a freaking river if I go on so I'll stop here <3

  
  
  


The aftermath of the events that lead to Gansey's death took weeks to subside and Adam was quite sure that some tendrils of the chaos would accompany them forever.

At first, obviously, everything was about this twice-deceased, twice-alive boy. The plan of hiding out at 300 Fox Way to look for some supernatural comfort was quickly disrupted by Helen showing up with Mr. and Mrs. Gansey in tow. Even the tolerance the Gansey family had developed for their youngest member's obsession had worn thin in the face of his disappearance with all his friends in conjunction with a terrifying wave of homicides.

Their arrival lead to two things: the first, pyrotechnical encounter between the Ganseys and Maura Sargent, and the five teens being forced to hole up in a country house belonging to the in-laws of a second cousin of Mrs. Gansey.

The combined power of Maura's and the Ganseys' resolutions ruled out every other option. The logistical headache involved in the arrangement was too difficult for any of the teens to follow. There was always someone in the house with them, but it was mostly a constant turnover of psychics from 300 Fox Way. Helen’s management skills were focused on keeping them off radar from the mayhem that was unfolding in the demon’s aftermath, and making sure no one could trace her brother and his friends to the house.

They were visited by trusted medics, had blood work and even echography done. They drew tarot cards and had their energies read. The house’s braziers burned with strange herbs. The vortex of analysis, psychic and otherwise, left them mostly unmoved, trivial in the comparison to the sheer panic of that crazy day.

Everything around them was quiet, real and organic instead of dreamy and otherworldly like the Barns or Cabeswater. _Anticlimactic_ was the best word for it. The puzzling reality of what happened was slow to sink into their hearts.

Adam could not even bring himself to care about missed school days, missed shifts, missed burdens; even the part of him that distantly hoped that Helen was taking care of it was way out of reach. On the other hand, he kept his friends close with single-minded intent.

In the first 48 hours after their quest for Glendower ended they mostly slept, all together on a king size bed that was obscenely large in a normal situation but crowded with all of them on it.  
Gansey constantly dominated the centre of the bed, like a tired and stunned king with a tendency to fall asleep every two hours while tended by an overly anxious court. Blue, Ronan and Adam rotated at his sides and Henry somehow managed to coordinate them all. 

In the hazy light of the very first morning after, Adam’s concentration faltered from the mass of limbs surrounding him to realize that every one of them was holding a bottle of water. He was not the only one to actually drink it and when his eyes caught Henry ushering Blue to the bathroom with minimum complaint he made a mental note to give him all the recognition he deserved for holding them together. But everything was difficult now and every time Gansey’s breath slowed down towards another patch of sleep the dread of the silence returned to them, so even _thank you so much_ had to wait.

It got a bit better when they hit 72 hours. Gansey’s waking hours broadened and he was even able to carry out some patches of soft conversations without sounding delirious. In turn, they all started to feel the reality of themselves and their own feelings and sensations beyond _inhale, exhale, his heart is still beating_.

Adam considered the sensations in his head – _in his eyes, in his hands_ – with his head resting between Gansey’s bent arm and his side. Gansey was leaning heavily with his back against Blue, so the angle was a bit uncomfortable, but that left Ronan and Henry enough space to be curled on Gansey’s lap in one case and sit with his legs tangled with Gansey’s in the other.

He was quite sure that Gansey was awake because he could hear an undertone of his rambling with Blue and Henry, but he was not contributing to it, distracted by the yellow-greenish lines on Ronan’s neck, purposeful and violent. They looked so out of place in the rustle of covers and clothes and the chirping of the birds outside that he only felt sick in a distant corner of his cotton-stuffed brain.

Ronan was looking back at him, though, like he was attuned to that single and remote line of thought in which Adam was loathing himself.

They stared at each other for a long time, only a handful of inches away across Gansey’s body. The conversation around them didn’t pause, not even when Ronan reached over to touch the side of his right hand. Adam did not break eye contact with him to check if they were being watched and concentrated on breathing.

It seemed like a second and three thousands centuries at the same time before he could move again, slow and sluggish. He slid his left hand from under Gansey’s arm and swapped it for his right one in Ronan’s solid grip, so he could reach over and cup Ronan’s nape.

Ronan did not stop his soft manoeuvring and Adam slowly caressed upwards on his head, on the far side of his handsome face. He was pliant to the touch, but not even the courage that Adam felt from being clustered together with all of them was enough to make touching his neck a possibility.

He felt like a coward and he felt infinitesimally better at the same time. Most of all, he felt unworthy of Ronan’s eyelids fluttering closed as he sighed out, soothed by the firm, steady hold on his left hand.

There was no way they were not being watched now, of course, but Adam found he seriously did not care.

  
  


* * *

  
  


The following night, the atmosphere was thick with the gears of life and routine sliding back into motion. The residual celebration of having spent three hours in the kitchen without nodding off and without food turning into ash in their mouths lingered among them like an additional occupant of the bed.

It was so late that even the wind was silent, the moon almost set over the mountains.  
Adam must have fallen asleep at some point, reassured by how responsive and coordinated Gansey had looked hours before when he hugged Blue close to his chest without drifting off midway through it.  
He was now up again without knowing exactly the reason, but the occurrence in itself was not really perplexing, as it had been happening constantly in the last handful of days. The only thing that really mattered was where the others were, even now that they were slowly getting over the piling up on Gansey.

Just a little beyond his arm’s reach, a messy outline of not-too-familiar hair and familiar features marked Henry and Gansey, their arms crossing in a half embrace that was loose enough to betray Blue’s presence right between them. Ronan was nowhere to be seen, though.

Adam’s eyes flickered around him, disturbed by the jarring absence, but quickly stopped towards the foot of the bed where Ronan sat with his legs messily twisted and his arms curled around the metallic footboard. There was something restless and dissatisfied about him, his gaze fixed on the thin slice of light coming from the outside through the half-closed curtains.

Adam knew he could easily call him, the quiet of this group bedroom always erratic and prone to breaking at odd hours, but he found himself weighing the possibility of Ronan — of him and Ronan — in a way that had more to do with his private person than with "the five of them.” A part of him considered that the thought represented a return to some semblance of normalcy, at least in comparison to the last few days. The last year. 

He stretched one leg to nudge against Ronan’s.

Ronan seemed to startle at the movement, shaken from his night-time brooding. He turned promptly to look at Adam, caught at fault and surprised at the same time. They regarded each other for a few long seconds, the bottom of Adam’s bare foot against the thin fabric of Ronan's shirt on the side of his waist. 

Adam marvelled at the utter reality of Ronan, as if he was conjured by his mind more than revealed by the shadows of the room; he could almost feel the echo of this very thought in the nervous, searching grip on his calf.  
Truth was that Adam was more familiar with Ronan's restlessness than he was with this newfound reality in which Ronan was also his to touch. It felt surreal.

The universe of their two kisses existed in parallel with the utter wrongness of Adam’s hands choking Ronan, along with the weird and impossible intersection of Ronan's shoulder under his cheek while he had shaken through the dark misery that followed.  
The universe they were in now felt like a third option, open with the chance of bringing something along from the others.

_Forsan et haec olim meminisse juvabit._

The memories were raw and shattered and Adam was immediately aware that he could not rejoice in them just yet in the same way Ronan could not calm down even in their bed-fort.

Adam lifted his hand a little, without withdrawing his foot. While he was sure that Ronan couldn’t see the suggestive rise of his left eyebrow he still got a peculiar sense of satisfaction — not unlike the thrill of making Ronan laugh — when he untangled himself from the footboard and slithered over to lay down next to Adam. Even in the dark, Ronan steadied his movement using Adam's leg as a guide and unceremoniously flopped on top of him, his head down against his chest.

He was heavy, they were not used to this, and possibly it was kind of uncomfortable. Adam wouldn’t want it any other way and was ready to spend hours rearranging rather than give it up.

Ronan eventually settled with the top of his head under Adam's chin, slotted between Adam's legs and slightly turned. He kept Adam’s left thigh crossed with his, his arm half-raised to grip onto Adam's shoulders just as he had with the footboard. Adam didn’t feel crushed anymore. He circled an arm over Ronan's back just as firmly and stroked upwards along his spine once, rippling the fabric in his wake, and smoothed it down again on his way backwards.

Feeling the subtle release of tension from Ronan's muscles encouraged him to do it again. This time, though, Ronan rocked against him slowly in time with Adam’s hand. Adam's leg dragged between Ronan's, Ronan's hips canted against his crotch, and the only echo in Adam suddenly silent mind was _Yes_.

When they both sighed through the sensation, he knew this was right, this was what was missing, this was something that made him feel grounded and reshaped as Adam-Parrish-after-the-quest. This was _his_ , and to finally feel individuality after so many days was intoxicating. This needed to be in this universe, as clearly and surely as was possible.

Adam kept stroking Ronan’s back and Ronan kept rocking against him, curled around him as tight as a vine, everything silent and still around them apart from the soft rustling of their own clothes and their breathing.  
They weren’t even chasing a purpose apart from being able to feel each other, to pursue the mental spark of vitality and fulfilment and chase away the confused numbness that lingered in the back of their mind. The very atmosphere around them felt different from the sleepy crowdedness of before, utterly _personal_ again.

He didn’t know about Ronan, but Adam was absolutely certain this was the closest, most intimate, he had ever been to another human being in his life. Rather than a crash and burn of mindless pleasure he could feel the warmth of Ronan’s body as if it were a rightful extension of his own. Every slide and grind of their bodies resounded in the marrow of his bones, whispering along and feeding his sense of _possession_.

Adam was sure he must be forgetting something. The refusal to overthink had been smoothing the edges of his reality so much in the last few days that it was all too easy to apply it to this very moment. He wanted to consider nothing past the sensation of Ronan breathing on the skin of his collarbone.

After several minutes, Ronan inhaled even more deeply and the tension almost completely left his body. It was a peculiar type of abandon, considering that Adam could feel him hard against his leg, just as hard as himself. Still, the tightness of Ronan’s grip unwound itself slowly and Adam immediately knew that the comfort they were feeling was similar.

The flow of Ronan’s following sigh was as fluid as Adam’s reaction, slowly pushing his lips against the top of his buzz-cut head. He had to withdraw slightly when Ronan turned his head on the side to look at him. It was impossible in the dark and at this close distance for either of them to read each other’s faces, so Adam just huffed softly and kissed Ronan’s forehead instead.

“Mmmhn.” The responding hum and its approving undertone came from beyond the two of them and made both of them stop in their tracks.

They turned their heads around simultaneously, now still in any other aspect, to find that while they were totally engrossed in their closeness the rest of the bed’s occupants must have woken up.  
Adam’s voice of reason in his mind, even distanced and silenced so much, pointed out that this was what he’d forgotten, what he hadn’t been considering. The dull twist that followed in his stomach was full of _should have_.

Gansey was looking at them from over the top of Blue’s head, and judging by the way she was shooting him a flat stare, he must have been the one to hum. Henry looked mostly asleep, but vaguely smiling in a way that might have to do with something more than having his back pressed against Blue’s chest.

“Gansey, why is it always you?” Blue murmured, reproachful.

“What? It was nice!” Gansey’s reply was uncharacteristic. He was still returning in bits and pieces to his old self after Cabeswater’s sacrifice. The fact that he had the common sense to look properly scolded at Blue’s words was a good sign.

“Operative word _was_. Now you made it awkward and we can’t have our nice thing,” Blue countered, her tone long-suffering.

Adam was still stunned into silence, trying to compute what they had just vividly communicated to the rest of the group and what the reaction ended up being. Ronan groaned, releasing one hand from Adam’s shoulder to pass it heavily over his own face, but he didn’t make any other gesture to suggest an impending escape attempt.

“That wasn’t my intention, I swear, it was nice!” Gansey felt the need to stress, this time seeming more directed to Adam and Ronan themselves than to Blue.

Ronan just groaned louder, turned his head around and hid it back in the crook of Adam’s neck.

“Go back to your fucking three-way sandwich, Dick.” His tone lacked the spikiness of his wording.

Adam laughed, almost subvocal and tilted his head backwards on the pillows to look at the ceiling, but he didn’t let go of Ronan. The weight of him against his body was grounding; the light-hearted bickering around him sounded like an encouragement to not feel too awkward about the whole ordeal. The twisting of his stomach and mind finally subsided. He resettled under Ronan, rearranging the excess of coverings that came along with including five people in a single bed.

The increasingly flustered quality of Gansey’s back and forth with Blue and Ronan left Adam to contemplate the possibility of an _after this_. A possibility for _normal_ , or at least _more_ normal, just around the corner.

Ronan was still muttering with his back markedly pointed towards Gansey, Blue and Henry. He was not really tense and let himself be soothed again by Adam’s resumed caressing of his back, even though they had stopped rocking against each other.

Adam stayed silent, contemplating the realisation of how easy and fluid it would have been to escalate that soft sliding into something more. How much he would have liked it, how much Ronan would have wholeheartedly participated. He let himself treasure that unabashed feeling of _want_ , to keep it as close as he was keeping Ronan now.

It would still be there for him to reach for and inflate and detonate, soon.

  
  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for reading!
> 
> Talk to me about my crazy after-quest headcanons and how evidently OCD I am in constructing them in the Comment section or on my [Tumblr](http://seekthemist.tumblr.com)
> 
> I live to ramble, trust me! :D


	2. The Burn-out

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Adam clashes hard against coming back to reality. Ronan is there for the final crush and burn, getting the bad, the worst and the better of it. 
> 
>  
> 
> [ Tags are edited to reflect the content of the chapter ]

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> First of all, thank you ALL for the warm reception that you gave to the first chapter of this fic. It means so much to me, seriously.
> 
> With this chapter, we really start to gear up the layering of the interactions. Surprising no one in the world, the more I write in this verse the more I get tangled in MORE things I want to say.
> 
> On a related note, [Luz](http://archiveofourown.org/users/Luz) gets more and more amazing in disentangling my weird train of thoughts, so I mentally dedicate her a round of applause every 5 minutes on average.  
>   
> 

  
  
  


Ten days later, Adam was so deeply entrenched in his routine it almost hurt, and he sometimes caught himself sorely missing the comfort of the king-sized bed in the country house.

When they came back from their much-needed exile, Henrietta was still standing. Most of the population was oblivious of the hell that had been unleashed and then contained. None of them seemed to correlate the strange announcements on the news with the missing posh, rich, untouchable people in their own town.

Each one of the teens had a tailored excuse so personal and so perfectly executed that the overall picture screamed of Helen’s perfectionism. Gansey and Blue’s matching stories of mononucleosis diagnoses carried a subtle mockery, but they worked smoothly and covered the additional days around the demon’s unmaking. The most impressive feats of fabrication were Henry’s cover of travel abroad with his mother and Ronan’s trip to DC to accompany Matthew for epilepsy testing. These excuses spoke of direct contact between Helen Gansey, Seondeok and Declan Lynch, and few things in the world were more frightening.

Adam’s justification had been banal and straightforward in the way everyone expected it to be. The funeral of a relative had granted him layby on attendance and extensions on assignments. It had been adjusted for work, as well, because his employers would never communicate with Aglionby but would definitely know if the Parrish family as a whole was off-State. For them, he was just on a mandatory school visit to Congress and later sick with a nasty high fever.

Adam had found notes of phone calls that he had never made, filled with _sorrys_ for the missed shifts, deals to rearrange his schedules and promises identical to the ones he would have made himself. In their mundane practicality, they smacked of the involvement of the women at 300 Fox Way and he was still trying to figure out how exactly they pulled the whole act together.

He remembered wishing, in his stupefied state at the country house, for someone to deal with this whole mess for him and let him _not think_ , just this one time. Now that their bubble had burst and they were back to “reality,” Adam found his wish granted.  
He felt immensely guilty, immensely grateful and immensely ashamed at the same time. Adam had spent so long doing everything in his power to avoid this exact feeling that throwing himself in the impossible task of collapsing twenty days worth of missed work – scholastic and otherwise – into ten was a knee-jerk reaction.

He let himself descend in an increasingly tight spiral of assignments, assignments, additional make up work, fixing cars, factory shift, fixing more cars. It had been so long since he single-mindedly devoted himself to this specific brand of exhaustion, which could only hold if everything else around him was detached and empty.

The longer the hours he trudged through, the more he needed to wrestle with his own brain about it. No, they had not lost everything they gained. No, his friends and the life he had built for himself were not about to disappear into thin air. But yes, he had to do this work; this was a required balance if he wanted everything to be _actually fine_ , because it wouldn’t be smooth and easy. It was better to pay the price now than to suffer the effects of a build-up of neglected responsibilities later.  
It was easier to stubbornly believe it during the day, when the autumn sun was up and everything was in motion around him.

It was less easy on nights like this, alone in the garage with the flickering of dodgy neon, black grease on top of the grim layer of a long day sticking to him like itchy clothing. There wasn’t a muscle in his body that wasn’t tense or aching. Every so often his vision went a bit blurry, losing focus.

On nights like this, he felt on the edge of falling back into the old slumber, never to get up again because he’d had his chance at being happy and fulfilled and somehow he still slipped back into this.

He drew a faltering, open-mouthed breath and gave another try to straightening one of the bolts of the fourth engine of the night. Still, his hand slipped in the grip and the torque wrench clattered on the floor.

“Fuck!” he swore between gritted teeth, planting his hands on the worktable and trying to muster what it took to pick up the tool and start the process again.

“Give it here, Parrish. Are you almost done?”

Adam whipped his head around, startled in spite of himself. It shouldn’t be so surprising by now how hooligans found their way into the garage at the peak of a crisis.

“Ronan,” he mumbled through his stupor, while watching him approach. It was quite possible that Ronan was being rhetorical in his question; Adam diverted his eyes towards the dirty tool on the even dirtier floor, though, and answered in all seriousness “No...not done.”  
Ronan just shrugged, venturing further into the flickering neon light and crouching down in front of him to pick up the wrench.

“Breathe. It’s fucking obvious.” His dismissive tone was weirdly counterbalanced by a soft, encouraging grin. He huffed when Adam just blinked at him, confused, and got closer in a couple of quick strides amid the general mess of evidently unfinished work on the workbench and surrounding.

With the wrench still in one hand, Ronan reached for him in an unknown and untested way, barely grazing the side of Adam’s face at first; when Adam stayed still instead of retracting – regardless to what was the default option for some part of his mind – Ronan stretched his fingers further and more fully, warm even though he had appeared from the depth of the cold night.  
Ronan’s hand combing through his hair felt like a revelation, a shiver echoing in his spine that made him feel wildly alive through the thick fog of his tiredness.

“I’ll finish this shit for you and then we can go home,” Ronan elaborated, quick and precise. “Directions, Parrish, I know you can do it.”

In the current state of things, the only thing Adam felt he could do was lean against Ronan’s hand and let the steadiness of his grip stop the ground from spinning sickly under his feet. The general rule Adam lived by, though, demanded something different: it wasn’t about what he _could_ do, but what he _would_ do anyway, instead.

That was how he found himself past three o’clock on a Friday night instructing Ronan on how to properly realign and secure a head gasket on a car engine. It would have been a quicker job if he just did it alone; it would have been quicker if he could teach Ronan how to do it clearly, but he found himself slurring and regrouping words every once in a while.

Ronan was uncharacteristically compliant, as careful as Adam had seen him being with the animals at the Barns. He was also bereft of snarky remarks for the moment. While Adam appreciated the way the quiet made it easier to settle his thoughts into a steady and comprehensible to-do list, it was difficult not to give in to some impending questions.

“Why did you come?” Adam asked, breaking a long stretch of silence.

“Because I hadn’t heard from you or seen you in ten days.” Ronan’s blue eyes stared straight at him only for a second, but with the same intensity Adam had come to expect.

The statement was absolutely true and absolutely cringe-inducing because of it.

“I can’t lose this job. Or the factory job. And I had a ton of assignments left. I had no time, it wasn’t on purpose.” He rattled off his excuses without finesse, tossing them out as they popped into his head. So much for all the methods he’d practiced at debate workshops.

It hardly a surprise that Ronan didn’t look or sound impressed when he said, “So are you about to get fired, lose your scholarship or whatever the shit?”

Adam gritted his teeth. Fatigue and annoyance felt remarkably similar in his mind. “No.”

Truth was, Boyd had been weirdly lenient towards what was sold to him as a school obligation, even as he emphasized how many cars he had left just for Adam because he was the only one he deemed capable of fixing them _properly_. The factory and the school had been dealt with from higher ends, evidently, so there hadn’t been many obstacles for Adam to deal with besides simply getting his work done.

“So business as usual, right?” Ronan interjected in his train of thought with the brutal precision of a wrecking-ball against a crumbling building.

“Yeah, everything’s so normal, isn’t it?” He couldn’t stop himself from spitting it out in the first place, and he didn’t even have the mental strength to regret it or amend it properly.

Ronan smiled thinly and dangerously, while picking up a screwdriver like the weapon of opportunity it had the potential to be. “Missing dread, despair and near-death experiences already?”

“Fuck you.” Adam countered, tone not completely amiable but not bitter enough to ruffle Ronan’s metaphorical feathers. If anything, Ronan looked delighted to hear the swearing. “We spent so long chasing…this thing. And now…Glendower…us…running in circles for a pile of dust? And that’s it?”

Getting worked up was never a good course of action and he knew it, especially when he felt more incoherent than he sounded, if that was possible. It didn’t stop him from gripping the corner of the table for support and as an outlet for his frustration, though.

“What does this have to do with you working yourself half to death?” The tone of Ronan’s question was too heartfelt to sound like a dismissal of what Adam was trying to express; it might have been quite the opposite, actually.

There was nothing to get angry about and yet Adam was angry about everything.

“It used to be easier, you know? With Cabeswater…” Adam stuttered, uncertain “It helped me deal with all of this. But now it’s gone, and everything ended and…and you’re just _fine_ with it?”

The provocation in his tone was deliberate, as if an angry Ronan was more easily understood and dealt with than this creature finishing his work for him and asking all these difficult questions. The way that he just stared at him, razor-sharp focus in his even sharper features, made something itch under Adam’s skin.

“Know what, you look…just fine…for someone who doesn’t have any idea of what _normal living_ is,” he added, without even waiting to see if he could get a reply from Ronan.

“Don’t I, now?” Ronan straightened one last bolt around the gasket, only half-looking to it as if assessing Adam was far more interesting.

Whatever crack was running through Adam’s mind just widened at this.

“The hell you do! You grew up with a toaster without a cord like it was normal!” He rocked nervously back and forward from the workbench. The weird mix of pent-up frustration and absolute lack of rest resulted in his head shutting down all the resources that hadn’t been allocated to keep his body vaguely going, his stubborn control of his Henrietta drawl included.

Ronan’s smile widened and he put the screwdriver down to circle the table and get closer to Adam, slowly and with a steadiness in his movement that Adam couldn’t help but envy. He felt more brimming up his throat but he was too far gone to stop his words from tumbling down an even darker path.

“Stop smiling, for fuck’s sake. Don’t you care?” he snapped, pushing for a reaction. “We’re done, Ronan. _Done_. We chased Glendower, burnt everything in our path, and now there’s no magic left…there’s nothing left!”

For a moment, everything in the garage was silent, apart from his panting breaths over Ronan’s calm ones. Adam felt raw and exposed, like his skin had been scratched off to reveal all his yearning and desperation. There was probably a malcontent that could never be soothed in him, especially not now that the wonder and the magic were gone without leaving any real closure behind.

Then Ronan spoke, closer to him that he realized before, and his words were balm and comfort and delight at the same, inexplicable time.

“Who says we’re done? I can still dream, so we’re not done.”

Adam gaped at him, wordless for the first time in the last half hour. Through the fog of his overworked mind something collapsed and reformed around Ronan’s statement.

“God,” he breathed, finally.

“We’ve been through this, Parrish, you can use my name.” Ronan’s smile was growing even larger and more smug. It was a different, more thoughtful smile than the one he’d sported before Adam completely flipped, though.

Adam’s thoughts kept whirring and turning around. He was outraged and he wasn’t, he was amazed but didn’t dare to be. He mustered the energy to raise one hand and punched Ronan on the shoulder to compensate, silently.

Ronan moved backwards with the momentum and then oscillated towards his hand again, to push in return, “I was going to tell you as soon as I figured out that there was still something going on when I slept. But you were too busy with your frenzy.” He sighed dramatically, but Adam was still surprised that he’d explained so much without being asked a question.

“Shit,” Adam murmured, lacking eloquence, but as they stared at each other he knew Ronan could understand the shades of his expression. The thought was less terrifying than it should have been. He flattened his hand on Ronan’s shoulder, drawing it back towards his nape.

“I didn’t dream when we were all together,” Ronan elaborated again, talking now that Adam’s words seemed to be drained. “And then when we came back…I didn’t really sleep for a bit, it was weird.”

Adam could only nod to show his understanding, as there was no way for him to express in words how he’d felt the first night back at St. Agnes, his bed empty, small and cold, the silence echoing through the church in a way that stressed how no one was breathing beside him.

“But you got it back,” he muttered, dumbstruck, trying to express something less greedy from his scrambled brain. “You wanted it back, right?”

This was blatantly in violation of the _Dealing with Ronan Lynch 101_ manual, which had several paragraphs dedicated to how you could not possibly expect a verbal answer to an emotional question if you formulated it directly. However, Ronan seemed to savor Adam’s amazement in that moment, which was unusual in itself. Adam was used to guarding everything he held dear and covering it up with layers of carefully constructed facades and perfect control. This uncharacteristic transparency made them feel weirdly in tune with each other.

“Yes, I did. You’re right, I don’t know how the fuck to be _normal_.” Ronan uttered the word with exaggerated disdain, and only proceeded to look more delighted when Adam laughed under his breath and dragged him closer, one arm circling his shoulder completely. “Good thing you’re so keen about this shit, because it’s a damn mess. So I’m going to have a fucking Gansey moment and say that I need your help to figure it out.”

Adam couldn’t stop himself from curling his fingers against Ronan’s skin and the fabric of his t-shirt as a sort of physical expression of the mental pleasure he felt at hearing the request. “Yeah, ‘course we can,” he reassured, with enough feeling to sound off even to his own ears “Maybe if you tell me how it goes…like landscape-wise…is that even a thing? I never asked all the details, but it can’t be like you dreaming and me fixing up stuff…”

Ronan’s laughter interrupted Adam’s accidental rambling, even though there was nothing derisive in the way he shook his head. “You’re fucking fried, man, your amazing brain is better fresh because that just now was a _very_ Gansey moment and I thought I already claimed it for the night.”

It was difficult to feel scolded or humiliated, especially when Adam found himself more concentrated on the curve of Ronan’s smile and the strange way he fit into his life. Under the flickering neon of Boyd’s garage, Ronan’s skin looked tight enough over his bones to suggest the blue pathways of some of his veins. The smudged trail of engine grease on the curve of his jaw was a striking contrast. 

When Adam lifted his free hand to trace the black line, not even purposeful enough to clean it, the quality of Ronan’s gaze on him shifted _just so_ and his sudden attention was practically thick enough to taste.

“You’re so attractive…and you’re already extraordinary…” Adam muttered, following the stunned quality of Ronan’s expression and the way it was sliding towards embarrassment. “Unfair,” he added.

He saved Ronan the trouble of having to find an answer by gripping his jawbone and dragging him into a kiss.

There was something intrinsically delightful to Adam in the way Ronan not only complied with closing the distance, but also bent his head slightly to lean more against his fingers. His nightly stubble was scratchy under the pads of his fingers and it wasn’t just the chillness of the garage that made Adam’s skin rise with goosebumps. The press of his thumb on Ronan’s chin was dutifully followed by lips opening, and Ronan’s soft sigh against Adam’s mouth promised a familiar warmth that Adam had to chase with his tongue.

Kissing Ronan was a greedy activity for Adam and tonight was no exception, but in contrast to the several trials at the Barns weeks ago, he had no mental strength left to be cerebral about it. Instead of dissecting the sensation in all its _how_ and _why_ and _maybe_ he just let himself soak into the deep fulfilment of the two of them fitting together, while Ronan’s hand raised to clasp his elbow.

Stripped of so many mental layers, Adam was so concentrated in the act itself that he felt the moment when Ronan figured out the kiss wasn’t going to be over quickly. His shoulders dropped and his tongue slid more leisurely against Adam’s. Then he felt Ronan’s desire to have him closer in the tension rippling through his shoulders, even before he reached around Adam’s back and pressed against it. 

Leaning heavily against him, the ground stopped spinning with exhaustion below Adam’s feet and he ran his short nails against Ronan’s nape for no better reason than that he could.

It was even easier to predict reactions like this. He felt Ronan’s chest heaving under his own and was ready when Ronan broke the kiss to gasp for some air, wet and soft lips still parted for Adam to catch them in his mouth and suck on them with just a hint of teeth.  
Adam liked linearity, precisely arranged puzzles and well-executed plans; the close-up view of Ronan’s eyes fluttering and the uneven quality of his breath happily fit into this category. He had felt burnt out and disconnected from himself but the possibility of having this was brutally grounding and rewarding.

He separated from Ronan just a moment, smiling more widely than he usually allowed himself. He’d nearly caught a bit of breath himself when he caught sight of the skin his fingers were stroking between Ronan’s jaw and cheek. The little solitary smudge of grease there was now confused and unrecognizable among the smeared lines left by Adam’s overworked fingers, black against his complexion, almost a forensic mark of fingertips where Adam’s grip had been more consistent.

Adam’s confidence in the lucidity of his thoughts was most likely misplaced because the sudden rush of blood flooding his brain and then departing for other regions was intense enough to make the pulsing of his veins palpable and his control over his body run even thinner. Other times, he would have resented the way he forcibly turned Ronan’s head to the side, quick enough to be almost rough; right now he was too busy latching his lips onto Ronan’s neck and testing a different approach to kissing.

Ronan was not opposed to being directed around but he was obviously a bit surprised, because he inhaled sharply and briefly before becoming breathless altogether. He was likely trying to hide his body’s tension, but Adam could feel it in the strong muscle of his neck, taut as a pulled string under his mouth.

Adam let his eyes go out of focus between the closeness and the contact when, breaking his previous stillness, Ronan’s hands ran along the curve of his back, tentative in their exploration and in the long sigh that followed. In turn, Adam slowed down, letting his mouth fall open and dragging the inside of his bottom lip along Ronan’s skin, towards the softness between his jaw and his ear. When Ronan swallowed deeply under a swirl of his tongue there, Adam had to wonder if there was such a thing as tasting desire.

Following the path of evidently sensitive skin, he landed just below Ronan’s ear and _sucked_. Ronan inhaled sharply and pressed Adam against his body by reflex, demonstrating how much he was getting into the whole situation. The reflexive part of Adam that regarded every situation with distrust and had been quietly suspecting Ronan of half-hearted indulgency shattered into a million pieces.  
The clean taste of Ronan’s skin contrasted with the greasy streaks of his fingers against his cheek on the other side, probably against his nape as well.

“Got you all greasy,” Adam slurred, completely out of check, against Ronan’s ear. He wanted him to understand what exactly provoked all this, as if it mattered, but he wasn’t exactly lengthy in his explanation.

“Fuck if I care.” Ronan’s reply almost vibrated under Adam’s mouth, distracted and heavy as if his tongue was stuck to the roof of his mouth.

For some reason, Adam had not expected him to sound so out of it and he found himself chasing the reaction over and over again, with a chain of varying approaches until he painstakingly figured out what worked and what didn’t.

By the end of it, Ronan couldn’t maintain the stillness that had granted Adam all his whims, turning himself to squirm away from his kisses with a hissed “ _Shit_.”

Adam blinked at him, at the flush on his cheek and his dark wide eyes; he couldn’t fathom why Ronan looked back almost disappointedly, as if Adam was about to call it a day just because he’d moved. As a matter of fact, the heat of him against Adam’s legs and the black smudge spread along his jaw and towards his lips only served to spur Adam more.

He kept his hand on Ronan’s nape but finally let go of his face, pushing his hand down to the button of Ronan’s jeans and his mouth forward to kiss that dazed expression away.

“Let me, jus’ lemme…” he urged, in a way that probably didn’t count as a request, not if he was already fumbling to undo the fly one-handed.

“Fucking _damn_ ” Ronan’s swearing caught in his throat and it didn’t count as a protest, if the iron grip on Adam’s work shirt and the way he just sought another kiss were anything to go by.

Adam complied wholeheartedly, deeply pleased by how it was slowly becoming easier to match their mouths in the right way without clashing teeth or mismatched tongues. It was even more satisfying to feel the hardness in Ronan’s boxers as soon as he made enough room for his hand by tugging the jeans down Ronan’s hips roughly.

The practical aspects of an act like this had never figured largely in Adam’s fantasies. His imagination had usually revolved around girls, maybe because of their unfamiliar anatomy or because they seemed so tantalizingly out of reach to him; or maybe he refrained from excessively thinking about boys because he instinctively suspected that it would put him _out of line_ in a way that wasn’t worth exploring.  
In the hazy state of his sleep deprivation – high on the way Ronan had revealed a new world of possibilities and had conceded him every whimsical desire to touch and taste and get – it was impossible to fantasize about anything else.

He palmed the outline of Ronan’s erection on top of the fabric and Ronan’s tongue faltered in Adam’s mouth as his hand dropped from Adam’s back to the workbench behind him.  
The kiss broke down completely when Adam let his greed take over again and pushed his hand directly into Ronan’s underwear, looking for warmth and desire and _weakness_. Ronan’s body shuddered with a humid, hiccupping breath, and the mindless movement of his hand as he tried to gain purchase on the bench made bits of equipment clatter.

The metallic sound paired with the smell of gasoline and oil and stale garage air felt peculiar and illicit to Adam, but he didn’t have much time to examine this thought. He was much more preoccupied with how hot Ronan’s cock felt into the small hours of this autumn night. The angle of his strokes wasn’t quite right, no matter how much he tried to adjust it; nevertheless the wetness on the tip spoke of _interest_ and it was difficult to get discouraged when he had Ronan breathing so heavily, watching him so intensely.

He must have gotten something right, after the fifth trial or so, because his fingers managed to curl just so and his wrist didn’t feel like it was about to cramp anymore. The strokes that followed were smooth and Ronan gave a rumbling, unfiltered groan that spiked a trail of sensation down Adam’s spine. He didn’t know how to interpret the double feeling of _alert_ , but when Ronan did it again, his eyes fluttering closed as he shivered, Adam found himself letting go of Ronan’s nape to bring his free hand to his mouth.

“Shhh, nice ‘n quiet, okay?” he murmured, leaning against him so that their foreheads almost touched, even though there was really no one around for several miles to hear them. Ronan’s breath was humid and heavy against the palm of his hand, his pupils so wide that his eyes almost looked black under the neon. He looked somewhat surprised but didn’t try to dislodge himself from Adam in any way.

Adam had rarely felt more mindlessly reckless than he was feeling tonight, his mind floating in a sweet spot between _too tired_ and _actually a bit joyful_. In contrast to his usual self-denial, the current situation with its lack of planning and calculations ought to have been full of spontaneous abandon.  
Caught up as he was between Ronan and himself and _Ronan_ , recognizing how his instinct was to refuse indulgence or resolve it efficiently was asking for too much. He was falling into that exact habit, and surprisingly it felt spotlessly suited to this frantic intimacy, like a maniac perfection.

He stroked Ronan fast, with a solid grip that was too dry everywhere except where Adam’s thumb flickered just under the tip and spread wetness around. He could feel himself smiling, mindlessly satisfied by the tremble that spread through Ronan in waves. He watched his hand around Ronan’s dick, a familiar motion in a different setting, while Ronan supported himself fully on the table and let his long legs fall further apart.

Another desperate sound filtered, half-stifled, from his hand against Ronan’s mouth and Adam could feel the vibration of it against his palm. His eyes flashed back up to meet a surprisingly flushed Ronan, expression liquid and possibly a bit out of breath.  
The irrational fear of getting caught returned to Adam, followed closely by wondering how many more grease stains Ronan was going to sport by the end of the night. 

He leaned towards Ronan, kissing his ear and the side of his neck again, and kept caressing him steadily even though his overworked muscles burned in protest.  
“Shhh,” he reiterated, surprising himself with the laboured quality of his breath and suddenly aware of how warm he was feeling. He sucked again at the skin he’d marked red with his kisses before. The perspiration he tasted was a reassurance he wasn’t the only one feeling heated.

Ronan reply came with a gurgled noise that seemed to surge from his throat directly and one of his hands shot up to grab Adam’s wrist. Be it a warning or a request, his grip was affected by the tremble that run through his body and Adam was too caught up in the moment to pay it real attention.

In the span of not even half a minute, his strokes grew wet, then wetter. Adam took his mouth off Ronan’s neck to look back down between their bodies to see Ronan coming all over his hand, his fingers losing their grip on his wrist. When Adam looked up, Ronan seemed even more surreal in the weird, dusty light. His head had dropped heavily to rest completely on Adam’s hand and his blue eyes were completely out of their usual sharp focus. 

“Shit,” Adam slurred softly, slowing his hand to a stop when Ronan patted against his arm with a sort of fumbling desperation. He looked absolutely wrecked, but considering that Adam felt like he had just been pushed over a cliff there was a sort of equilibrium in his mind about the whole ordeal. 

He lifted both of his hands off Ronan, one a bit drooled on and the other full of cum, and could not care less about both messes. He just listened to Ronan’s worked-up panting, colour blotching up his cheeks unevenly and a wet glisten on his lips.

There was little left to do but to finally touch their foreheads together completely and to reach over blindly to the counter, fishing out the first available rag – dirty enough to not really resolve the situation – before throwing it in the bin. 

“Fucking hell,” Ronan rasped out after a while, circling Adam’s back and bodily pulling him closer until they were hugging each other tightly. They stayed like that long enough that the trembling tension in Ronan’s body subsided, long enough that a weird sort of satisfaction sunk deep into Adam’s heart and went on to spread warmth all over his body.

Ronan managed to straighten his stance a bit, even though it was Adam who distractedly thought about fixing his underwear back and pulling his jeans up. Adam, in turn, felt himself drift mentally, and possibly physically as well; the next thing he was consciously aware of was his face smashed in the crook of Ronan’s neck and Ronan’s hand back in his hair. 

“You’re an asshole,” Ronan said, somewhere beside him. Adam sighed deeply before humming in confirmation, and let his mind _stop thinking_.

He didn’t know if it had been two minutes or twenty when Ronan spoke again. 

“Are you falling asleep on my shoulder?” His voice was surprisingly soft, almost mindful.

“...Maybe,” Adam slurred, thickly accented without managing to care about it. He distantly registered that his eyes were in fact closed.

Ronan huffed in what sounded like an half laugh, “We’re going the fuck home.”

“‘Kay.” Though it wasn’t even a question, Adam agreed easily, letting Ronan direct him around with minimum disgruntlement at the realization that _going home_ also implied _you need to move_.

Ronan took charge of turning off the light and picking up the keys to bolt the door closed, all while directing Adam out with strangely delicate hands. When he extended his care to putting Adam on the passenger’s seat of the BMW, Adam was struck by the realization that no one had ever handled him so carefully when he needed it, not even when he was a kid.

“The Hondayota is here,” he mumbled, scattered ideas and organization popping into his mind out of pure habit. He was more tired than he had a right to be, crashing down completely and suddenly like a worn-out cord pulled too tight.

“There is no way in fucking hell you’re driving.” Ronan dismissed him with a pointed look, closing the car door and going around to get into the driver’s seat.

“Right,” he found himself agreeing while Ronan started the car. The beat of electronic music accompanied the ignition.

Adam drew a long, long breath and could feel himself melting on the familiar leather of the seats. He was asleep before the outline of Boyd’s garage had disappeared from the rearview mirror.

  
  


* * *

  
  


When Adam woke up again, the car was still, the passenger’s door at his right side was open and Ronan was patiently shaking him into wakefulness while the clock on the console flashed 4:49 a.m. _Wakefulness_ was of course a huge overestimation of the torpor with which he dragged himself towards the main house in the Barns, without even questioning the lack of an intermediate stop at St. Agnes.

Years of experience on functioning even after the proverbial emergency battery had drained off were responsible for the fact that he got, in strict order: inside, upstairs without shoes on, clean clothes from Ronan, undressed, showered, dry, dressed for the night and back to the hallway. Ronan found him standing there and contemplating how dark it still looked outside, now that summer was gone and dawn at 5.30 a.m. wasn’t a possibility anymore.

“Can I come to bed?” he found himself asking, under Ronan’s renewed touch on his arm.

He only realized just what he’d asked for when Ronan shut off the light in his bedroom and Adam found himself in the dark beside him, under the covers and surrounded by soft, clean, warmth. Just like that, his mind sparked awake once more, in sputtering flashes that demanded attention.

“Ronan,” he said softly in the dark to the figure lying on his side facing him not even half an arm’s length away.

“Are you even alive?” Ronan replied sarcastically, but did not ask him to shut up.

“Sort of,” Adam admitted, turning fully on his side as well. “It was a weird night.”

Ronan snorted but still reached over in the dark to grasp his wrist. His hand was soft but it echoed their recent arrangement to Adam. “Because you’re a weird asshole, Parrish.”

Adam breathed softly for a while, trying not to nod off and instead cataloguing the sensation after the adrenaline high before his rigorous logic came to straighten and reinterpret everything.

“Was I…off? Was it weird?” He squeezed his eyes through the vulnerability of his questions, but he had replayed the scene in the garage over and over while washing off grease from everywhere it had stuck to, and his second-guessing of himself was so strong that it was difficult to think of anything else.

“You’ve got no chill whatsoever. Like a man on a fucking mission.” Ronan replied, after one second of silence in which he did not retract his hand, not even when Adam got tense at his reply. “So no. Not off. Very you,” he concluded. Adam was struck by how much Ronan had just conveyed to him with a handful of words.

He inhaled sharply around the fluttering of his heart, lacking the lucidity he would need if he had any hope of interpreting how Ronan’s reaction made him feel. Instead, he gave the most efficient approximation of a proper response that his scrambled brain could offer: “Maybe I have an idea about the dream thing.”

As earnest as he sounded to his own ears, Ronan just laughed softly, affectionately enough to to make something _pulse_ in Adam’s chest again. “Fucking rad, but I like your full brain better,” he said, fingers caressing the skin over his veins. “Go the fuck to sleep, we’ll talk about it tomorrow.”

Closer to him than he had ever been before, still raw from overexposure and already yearning for more, Adam went the fuck to sleep.

  
  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for reading!
> 
> The comment section is open for discussion of how much Adam is self-deluded about having his shit together :D  
> Alternatively, come and scream at me about rough handling and related business on my [Tumblr](http://seekthemist.tumblr.com)
> 
> Stay tuned for more in 7-10 days! :333


	3. The Grief

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The weight of issues and harm left unexplored and unelaborated catches up with Ronan, regardless that he knows how to approach it or not. 
> 
> There might be light at the end of the tunnel, if he resists the urge of burning it down.
> 
>  
> 
> [ Tags are edited to reflect the content of the chapter ]

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Let's address the elephant in the room: I'M LATE, I'M SORRY.
> 
> The last two weeks have been completely hectic (the last one in particular, as the whole world knows).
> 
> To make up for it, this chapter is possibly the longest thing I've ever written as part of a fic that is doomed to be even longer.  
> Please sent lovely thoughts to [Luz](http://archiveofourown.org/users/Luz), who gave it not one, but TWO rounds of editing. I would be lost without her and I don't deserve how brilliant she is.
> 
>  
> 
> N.B for the chapter: not only is lengthy, but also **the timeline is not linear**. It will get to the point in which it's a sequel of Chapter 2, but not immediately.  
>   
> 

  
  
  


The Country House Arrest – as Ronan had termed their situation for the time being – officially ended at lunchtime of the eighth day, and not because they hadn’t tried to get away before that.

It all boiled down to how long normal people could handle a fundamentally lucid but mildly bored Gansey. As long as he stayed confined in bed with Ronan, Adam, Blue and Henry and only ventured out for meals, he was tolerable. Then his active hours started to get longer and it was only a matter of days until he truly began to get on someone’s nerves.

The last straw came when Jimi, who was there for the day and was just trying to cook them one of the aforementioned meals, found herself surrounded by five teens. Gansey was incredibly interested in the process of stir-frying but also easily derailed onto tangents about spices and temperature gradients. Henry most likely didn’t know anything about it but still managed to behave like he did in a weirdly entertaining way filled with improbable comments about his heritage. Adam was actually trying to be helpful in the kitchen, but he tended to get caught in the crossfire of Ronan and Blue’s bickering or end up re-explaining _that’s not exactly how oil behaves, Gansey_.

“Jesus, children!” Jimi – who had tolerated them through the week and had been perfectly patient throughout the last two hours as well – piped up through the chaos, at some point, a rag clenched in her hands like a token of authority. “I’m calling Maura and we’re ending this, before you all go even madder than you were before!”

By four PM they each had bags packed with all the clothes that had been brought to them during their stay. They drove from the countryside to 300 Fox Way — Ronan, Adam and Jimi in the BMW and Henry, Blue and Gansey in the Camaro.

“Does it bite?” Jimi asked at some point along the way. Ronan was pushing on the gas pedal with all the fervour of an addict after a long abstinence. Chainsaw rested in the crook of Adam’s arm on the passenger’s seat.

“You’re the psychic, you tell me,” Ronan replied, flashing a sharp smile towards the back seat.

“She doesn’t,” Adam supplied, always courteous, “She can just be a bit…cranky, sometimes.”

“Oh really? What a wonder.” Jimi’s smile was self-satisfied in not-so-hidden mockery. Knowing the Fox Way ladies, there was no way she wasn’t aware that Chainsaw was one of Ronan’s creations.

Ronan scoffed just as the young raven puffed her feathers, only to be placated by the soft stroke of Adam’s fingers over her head. Ronan could relate to that as well, but of course he said nothing and stared at the road.

By the time they parked on modest, cheerful Fox Way, the Camaro was still nowhere to be seen. The three of them were all too happy to get out of the car nonetheless.

“Do you think the Pig got stalled somewhere?” Ronan said, tilting his head to avoid Chainsaw’s flapping wings as she landed on his shoulder as soon as Adam released his grip on her.

“I think Gansey understands the basic concept of speed limits,” Adam countered as he grabbed their bags from the boot, the rise of his eyebrows easy. His voice was too relaxed for the words to come out scolding.

“Well, that’s bullshit,” Ronan bantered back, locking the car with a click before pushing the keys into his jeans pocket with his thumbs in tow.

“They’ll be here soon,” Jimi reassured with fluid certainty, guiding them through the overgrown grass of the wild front yard towards the front door that was already swinging open.

“...With pastries, if they know what’s good for them. I didn’t raise Blue as a savage.” The imperious voice that piped up from the entrance was unmistakably Calla’s, even before they got a look at her.

“Still _my_ daughter, Calla, and pie is still not dinner,” Maura added as she opened the door, with the long-suffering tone of an old argument. “Welcome back, boys. Care to come inside?”

Ronan looked back at them silently and then diverted his gaze under the unnerving weight of a psychic looking at you when all your secrets are laid bare but you’re still not sure what to make of yourself. Leaving Adam to the pleasantries was much easier.

“You should stop brooding with your bird, Snake, and pick up what you left with us,” Calla called back at him while they made their way towards the kitchen. 

Ronan didn’t have time to reply with anything snarky, because Chainsaw cawed suddenly. She was echoed by the same sound from down the hallway, followed by a quick galloping sound on the wooden floor.

“Kerah!” The Orphan Girl appeared in the soft light filtering through the multicolored stained glass window and latched herself directly to his legs. Ronan looked down at her with a critical eye. It was strange to see her — so lively and so much more complex than Chainsaw was, in her floppy dress and high rubber boots stained with mud.

“Hey, brat. Did they treat you well?” The girl nodded with her face against his jeans and Ronan messed her blond hair up with one hand, feeling a bit less guilty about having left her with the psychics instead of holing her up in the country house with the rest of them. “You didn’t munch on all the fucking furniture, did you?” he added, catching Adam’s smile and returning a wicked grin of his own.

“Do I even want to know what that’s supposed to mean?” An extremely collected voice broke the moment, coinciding with Henry, Gansey and Blue skipping in just then from a conveniently still open front door. 

Everyone froze at their entrance and Helen Gansey, standing by the doorway to the kitchen in sober clothing, pulled back hair and sensible shoes, stared back at them.

“Helen!” Gansey piped up, moving towards his sister “We didn’t know you were going to be here! The Suburban wasn’t even outside.”

“That would be because I did not organize all of this so carefully just to put it in jeopardy. I didn’t come here with my car.” Helen’s reply shone with organization as rigorous as the gears of a clock, but her eyes were intense as she looked Gansey up and down more than once. Seeming satisfied with what she saw, she fixated on his face for a second before reaching forward to hug him.

Gansey’s surprise was almost palpable, not only for the act but for the fact Helen had done it with people around to witness. He hugged his sister back all the same. “We really appreciate all your efforts,” he murmured.

“We’ll see about that,” Helen replied, letting him go. She kept staring at Ronan in an unnerving way.

“What?” Ronan couldn’t avoid biting the question rather than asking it. The Orphan Girl hid behind his legs. 

“If you’re really grateful, you’ll start giving us all some real answers. I’m done with just indulging you and whatever new friends you bring around, Dick. Considering where indulging has gotten us.” Helen sounded very serious, and Ronan could feel himself stiffening.

“It was just a saying, no real meaning behind it,” Adam said hurriedly, clearly in damage control mode. Evidently Ronan wasn’t the only one who’d been put on edge by Helen’s tone.

Helen just sighed, without even bothering to look cross. “Adam, it’s lovely to see you well. If you’d refrain from insulting my intelligence, seeing as I don’t even know where that child came from, I would appreciate it.”

The silence that followed engulfed everyone. Ronan and Adam stood silently next to each other, shielding Ronan’s dream girl. Gansey just blinked at his sister. Blue was frozen with her arms around her mother and Calla, who had joined them from the kitchen. Even Henry wore the stunned expression that was the only real way to react to Helen Gansey showing why the Gansey name had the reputation it did.

It was not only the reprimand that shut them all up, but also the knowledge that they were going to have to go through a full round of explanations. The world around them had continued to spin, and it was waiting for them to come back.

Helen gave them a weirdly satisfied smile. “Brilliant. Now, before the five of you panic, get yourselves into the kitchen. I’ll debrief you on how we get out of all this unscathed and _then_ we’ll talk business.” Helen spoke with the certainty of a person accustomed to people following her lead unquestioned because she didn’t leave any room for second-guessing. All the composure that Ronan had managed to keep during their time away ignited like dry leaves under a match, anxiety and discomfort feeding the flames.

“Yeah, no thanks. Fuck this shit,” he said from behind gritted teeth. He picked up his dream girl before stomping off towards the backyard, as though too nervous to leave her with the rest of them. He made his way around the mismatched furniture that filled the weirdly shaped corridors and refused to let himself hope that anyone would follow him.

With a final kick to the grated backyard door, left slightly ajar, Ronan deposited himself and an unamused Orphan Girl outside. “Don’t give me that look, brat, or next time I’ll leave you alone with Congress Campaign Manager.” The threat was empty — he hadn’t considered leaving her for a moment — but it managed to stop a string of complaints before it started.

He half-expected her to scamper off somewhere to mull over the offense of being picked up, but instead she hovered close to him on the porch where he sat picking viciously at splinters of the worn-down wood. “You know that’s never gonna happen — I’m not going to give you away to random people who wouldn’t understand shit,” Ronan grumbled after a few long minutes of silence, discomfited by Orphan Girl’s big eyes constantly staring at him.

“And since when have you been appointed the mighty judge of what other people understand, Snake?” The stubborn resolution of his thoughts flared upon the interruption. He whipped his head around to find Calla leaning on the doorway, all her weight on one leg and one shoulder. Her arms were crossed and she wore an expression that mirrored Ronan’s own contempt.

“Since it’s not other’s people fucking business,” he snapped back, all the relative calm accumulated in the quiet of the country house already boiling out of him in waves.

“But it’s other people’s business helping you and your friends after you’re done playing with fire?” Calla’s voice was rich with character as usual, but remarkably flat with how unamused she was.

Ronan was struggling to construct a reply to cover the burning feeling of uneasiness when Orphan Girl piped up. “The lady was around a lot while you were away, Kerah.” She sounded like she was trying to convey something without being really sure of how to articulate it.

It puzzled Ronan to see her eyeing Calla, of all people, especially since Calla seemed to be understanding his own creation better than he could. “Yeah, she was, Opal. She was keeping everything in check while the guys were away,” Calla said.

Ronan gritted his teeth hard enough to feel the pressure on his own skull, and didn’t even bother to open his mouth fully before interjecting “ _Opal_? Did you just fucking rename her in a week?”

Calla rolled her eyes, completely unbothered by his rage. “Do you consider _Orphan Girl_ a name, seriously? She renamed herself, by the way, when we asked her what we should call her.”

Ronan turned to look at the little satyr girl with a renewed pang of unease, suddenly aware of how rushed it had been of him to leave her here, to just follow other people’s leads. Gansey had just _died_ and he’d been unable to do anything but sit through fumbled explanations of the situation and get shipped off with the promise that they could be close to each other and _away_. He twisted the leather bands on his wrist and looked at Orphan Girl shuffling on her rubber boots close to him. “Did you?” he just asked, voice soft in a way that was surprising even to his own ears.

Orphan Girl eyed him a bit suspiciously, grumpy in the way she was always grumpy and out-of-place in this real world that Ronan had accidentally pulled her into. She didn’t answer with words. Instead she fumbled around her wrist and handed him Adam’s watch.

Ronan leaned closer to look at the tiny clock cupped in her hand and figure out what she wanted to show him. The watch was just as unremarkable as Ronan remembered it, dull brass and a circular face with latin numerals. It was scratched here and there but the marks had been polished carefully enough to almost fade away apart from one new prominent set of teeth marks where the brand was supposed to be printed on the wristband. It was nice enough, but it was probably a marked-down leftover from a mall sale and there was no way it could pass for anything else in the halls of Aglionby. He was about to look back at Orphan Girl and ask for clarification when he noticed that where the brand name of an expensive watch would be printed, the center of the face just read _Opal_.

He blinked up at the little girl and she grinned with more teeth than he remembered her having. “Opal!” she proclaimed, self-assured.

Ronan felt all of his anger drain away, thinking of how carefully Adam had dealt with her, of Adam crouching beside him and fastening the watch on her wrist. He could only smile in return, lifting his hand to mess with the girl’s short hair. “Opal it is, then.”

When he dared to sneak a look at Calla by the doorway, her expression’s usual severity had softened a bit. Ronan looked away again, concentrating on the damp uneven grass and the clutter of random objects that lay around the yard while Orphan Girl — Opal — happily fiddled with Adam’s watch to put it back on. 

“I’m not sure if I can dream the same way anymore.” The confession came out unpracticed and sudden, honest in a way that Ronan, for all his principles, was only able to express outside of the tightknit group he’d spent the past week in constant company with.

The silence that followed was absolute and long enough that he managed to regroup himself and look at Calla in defiance, ready to bite off something appropriately venomous and earn another notch on his _Snake_ belt. But Calla was looking back at him in that distant and contemplative way that marked all the women of 300 Fox Way as somehow _untouchable_. A reactionary voice ingrained by years of Sunday school whispered in Ronan’s mind. He realized that the expression Calla wore was an echo of the strange, powerful look that Adam sometimes had. He twisted his leather bands tightly around the tip of his index finger and wished for his mental centre of gravity to stop shifting so uncontrollably.

“Then it doesn’t really matter, Snake, does it?” Calla replied, truth and dare and mystery lingering in every one of her vowels. “Tell the poster lady what she wants to know,” she suggested before turning around and going back into the house.

Ronan was left on the porch, worn wood biting the crease of his folded legs and the late afternoon sun filtering through a shifting layer of clouds. He was restless, angry at his own restlessness, restless at his own anger. He had nothing left to hide under any more, but he didn’t want to face what was left. 

Opal was busy jumping between lumpy patches of ground, telling him about all the things that had happened in his absence. Everything featured either Maura or Calla or Jimi, more rarely some strangers during errands. It took Ronan a while to realise that the reason it all sounded _off_ was the same reason the house itself felt _empty_ : everyone was gone, chased away by the danger they had unleashed. So many people had to remove themselves from the bullseye of danger Henrietta had become — but still, they were helping Ronan and his friends put themselves back together.

He went from twisting his leather bands to biting on them when clenching his teeth stopped being enough of an outlet for the whirl of his thoughts. The Orphan Girl, with her fancy new self-appointed name, munched on the corner of a fence post. As he thought, he realized that the only realistic arguments he could come up with against confiding in people outside his circle of friends sounded uncomfortably like his father speaking.

“Fucking Christ,” Ronan mumbled. He had to steel himself to take the much-loathed, mostly-abandoned cell phone out of his back pocket and punch out a message.

_We’re back. How’s Matthew?_  
  
_Helen Gansey wants to know shit._  


  
He had to fight the urge of throwing his phone against something hard as an outlet, and even let Opal teach him a weird game with some of the flat stones that lay around the garden while he waited for a response. Then he wanted to throw _himself_ against something hard for how quickly he picked up his phone as soon as it pinged with a notification.

  
_ Declan Lynch _  
  
_Good. We’ll call later._  
  
_H.G. doesn’t grill you directly without having_  
_the answer already. She’s testing you. Basic tactic._  
  
_Tell her what’s up._  


  
Ronan found himself exhaling without realizing that he was holding his breath while waiting for the sequential texts to end. The discomfort that had been grinding in his mind, full of _family business_ and _secrets_ and _you don’t ever talk about it_ was quelled once again.

“Opal,” he called, standing up, refusing to trouble himself with technology any longer. The name felt strange in his mouth but her wide, delighted eyes staring back at him made it worth it. “We’re going back in. No fucking around.” It was probably evident that he wasn’t only saying this for her benefit, because she just skipped back on the patio without a retort.

“And wipe those boots on the doormat, for fuck’s sake,” he added, opening the backdoor — without kicking it — to go back inside.

  
  


* * *

  
  


It took Ronan roughly thirty seconds in the kitchen to figure out that Helen Gansey was not the kind of general the troops wanted to banter with. 

Gansey, Blue, Adam, and Henry were seated in a perfect line of chairs on one side of the table. Helen paced along the other sides. The wooden surface held a collection of papers and bullet-point summaries. Chainsaw was flapping around among them but while she had scattered paper clips all around she hadn’t ripped any of the documents to shreds.

Helen smiled thinly behind the rim of her chipped cup of tea — _Jimi’s_ tea, most likely, and she was still _standing_ — and Ronan suddenly felt like a knight on a chessboard that had finally slid back into its place and moved in the way she’d wanted. 

That vague sense of danger — and not the type that Ronan could outrun, out-punch or out-insult — should have been enough to capture Ronan’s attention. Instead his eyes lingered on Adam, who had barely acknowledged his entrance in the room. His face was as beautiful and unmovable as a statue but there was a subtle tension in his shoulders and the suggestion of wrinkle between his eyebrows. He had his debrief folder in his hand and kept glancing down to it.

Ronan had spent so much time sneaking glances and trying master the _What is Adam Parrish thinking_ guessing game (all while doing his best not to look like he gave a damn) that he immediately knew that face. 

This whole “welcome back to the real world” business was going to be a _mess_.

  
  


* * *

  
  


Ronan had almost three days at the Barns to regroup and try to establish some sense between himself and his actions. Whatever had been done — which, from what he’d bothered to read of his own “debrief folder,” had been a lot — the Barns were secure and free for him, Opal, and Chainsaw to roam once again.

Normally he would have wanted more time. The others would have had to drag him out bodily or find something else to provoke his interest since the hunt for Glendower had ended. But he returned to a farmhouse that still held the signs of havoc and homicide. As expected, there were few material signs of the chaos but the clutter of objects in the house was out of place in a way that bothered Ronan intensely.

He spent the first night mired in the all-too-familiar spot between pity and fury, seated on the floor of the living room and staring at the couch where he had woken up to find himself orphaned once and for all. The only differences now were that the demon that had killed his mother was gone and he knew himself what it felt like to be almost unmade.

Ronan dwelled on his thoughts long enough that a treacherous part of his mind began to suggest that he could drink it out. But with all the questions answered, the reality that if he had just _paid more attention_ to the big picture he might have prevented his mother’s death had surfaced. He felt disgusted at himself for even thinking about purposely impairing himself again.

There was no enormous bed, no twist of bodies, no five-person-universe to placate the turmoil of his thoughts. Ronan just let himself be battered by them, sitting by the empty fireplace and clanging the ash shovel against the grate until he almost bent it. He didn’t sleep, didn’t even attempt to.

On his first full day at the Barns he dedicated himself to cleaning the entire downstairs with brutal efficiency. He had woken from the demise of his night terror and his mother’s unmaking dragging a grim, black knot of bloody remains. It hadn’t been enough to call a corpse, but it had been enough to leave traces of gore throughout the living room. The shadow of a pool of blood marked the spot where Laumonier’s body had dropped after being shot. He wasn’t an expert on bleaching biological waste away or household chores but he felt desperate to restore his house to what it had been before, both inside and outside his own head.

Eventually he collapsed into one of the window seats as if he was capable of falling asleep like a normal person. But when his eyes slipped closed there were only darkness and silence waiting for him on the other side. It wasn’t the malevolent endless pitch of swallowed nothingness that the demon had sought; it was only quiet stillness, like a spread of dark fabric or the silence over a lake on the night of a new moon.

He woke up empty-handed and empty-hearted, stripped of his anger and fractured in his grief. He would have given everything to end it in a way that could bring justice to his mother, though in a way it had. Maybe this was the universe’s way of balancing itself — taking away his dreams and the texture of his world after having unleashed so much madness.

There was nothing keeping him from moving, but he stayed perfectly still and stared at the living room curtains for a long time, eyes unseeing.

  
  


* * *

  
  


Declan and Matthew arrived late Friday evening, having left DC as soon as Declan could feasibly get off photocopy duty at the legal firm that was hosting him for an early internship. Ronan had spent several hours trying to prepare for the mandatory conversation that was coming. He had already delayed it for weeks — fumbled explanations about demons and Gansey and _just give me some time_ didn’t really count as communication — but he still selfishly wished he could at least stall his brothers with dinner. As it was, there was only so much time he could spend hugging Matthew, letting him talk about everything he’d done over the last week, and listening to him stutter through a description of what had happened to him while Ronan was being unmade.

“Mom is gone,” Ronan murmured, at the end, after almost two full minutes of perfect silence. He was sitting on the couch — the same damn couch — Matthew beside him, Declan on the nearby armchair. He couldn’t look at either of them. He just stared stubbornly at the corner of the coffee table, the line of his jaw matching the tension through his whole body.

Declan’s sharp breath and clenched jaw indicated surprise, but he said nothing. 

It wasn’t surprising that the first reply came from Matthew. “What? Where, why?” He had definitely grasped the tone of finality that Ronan had put on the sentence but he was too shocked not to struggle for confirmation or reassurance.

“She’s gone, Matthew. Like Dad. It was...” His own voice rasped in his throat. He didn’t want to do this, he didn’t want to say it. He _had_ to, though. “I had her in a place where she could be better. And she was. I thought it was safe…” He had to stop again, the shiver along his back at the memory of finding her too strong to suppress, too strong to just twist it out on his leather bands. “What hurt Matthew...and was hurting me...got to her first. So she’s gone,” he concluded.

Matthew stood up abruptly, asking none of the questions that a story like Ronan’s would have provoked in anyone else. Instead, when Ronan forced himself to look up he found Matthew fretful and upset in the way a puppy would be, knowing that something was wrong but unaware of how to process the information. 

Matthew was a creature of love and laughter; not meant for grief or pain. He had easily empathized with Ronan and then slipped into an efficient routine with Declan when Niall had died. Now that Ronan’s tone was lifeless and Declan was completely silent, he didn’t know what to do with himself.

 _I made him that way_ , Ronan thought miserably. _I made him partial and incomplete, and if he cracks under this hell it will be my fault._

Matthew pressed the heels of his hands against his temples, pacing for a few restless steps before saying “I’m going to my room,” in a weird, out-of-tune voice. Without waiting for a reply or a reaction he bolted out of the living room, steps echoing heavily in his rush up the stairs.

“Fuck!” Ronan swore against a clenched fist, blood running acid in his veins. He couldn’t do this, but dropping the issue was not an option. “Matthew, wait, shit.” He made to stand up and follow him upstairs, brain mustering something unformed and probably insufficient.

He didn’t make it past the doorway of the living room when Declan — whose eyes and expression Ronan had carefully avoided — grabbed him by the shirt and slammed his back against the wooden doorframe. 

“Are you done _now_?” Declan snarled in his face before Ronan could open his mouth.

Ronan lifted one hand and pushed him hard on the chest, trying to dislodge him and instead getting another rough shove for his trouble. “Get the fuck off me, I need to talk to Matthew,” he gritted between closed teeth.

Declan’s half-laugh was derisive and bare of any amusement. “To tell him what, Ronan? What can you tell him that he’ll understand?” Ronan was caught off guard by the question and holding Declan’s gaze got even harder. “So, one more time, are you done? Are you done playing?” Declan pressed, unrelenting.

“I wasn’t fucking playing. Do you think I wanted this?” Ronan bit out, swallowing the real question boiling under his skin: _Do you think it’s my fault?_ Of course it was, this time more than ever, when every string ended up leading to him.

“No, Ronan.” Normally lies spilled from Declan’s mouth so easily that everything he said was slippery. This violent and stressed version of him was the closest thing to earnesty Ronan had seen in the last year or so. “But you didn’t want to listen, ever. These games you’re playing are fucking twisted, so are you done screwing around like they aren’t?” he concluded, in a tone that demanded Ronan’s attention.

Ronan’s insides ached as though Declan, surgical in his precision, had pushed against every bruised spot inside him. “I didn’t know what was happening. I didn’t understand,” he found himself confessing, restless and tormented. The worst part of it all was that Declan had given him hints and he still hadn’t understood how everything had the potential to work together so disastrously. He had seen their quest, his dreams, the Gray Man, and Greenmantle as a pile of disparate issues instead of noticing the trap before it snapped shut.

Declan drew a long breath and the pressure of his forearm against Ronan’s chest relented a bit. “I know you didn’t. Just like I don’t understand three quarters of what you and your friends have been up to. But I saw the other side, and you just…” Ronan was familiar with Declan’s guilt-tripping and in the back of his mind the fight was already building up, but Declan paused just before the ignition. When he started again, his tone was different. “I did it wrong, Ronan. I did it Dad’s way, even knowing it didn’t work for him. I’m done now. Are you?”

Talking did not suit the Lynch brothers — and Declan was still doing most of it — but what was left unexpressed still managed to flow between them through their shared experience. Thoughts of their father and all the misplaced secrecy, half-truths, and needs left unattended clashed in Ronan’s mind. In the wake of the last handful of weeks, even trying to hold a grudge left him asking what the point was.

Looking at Declan with burning eyes, he could only nod, his throat clogged with how done he really was.

Declan grasped his shoulder and squeezed it a bit, silently. “Okay. Good,” he murmured. The undertone of conflict was still there in a way that felt at once familiar and foreign to Ronan, just like everything else Declan did. “Come on, let’s go find Matthew.” He gave Ronan a last pat on the shoulder and started to made his way upstairs, giving Ronan a second to stop his vision swimming.

Ten minutes later he was sitting with both his brothers on the bed in their parents’ room. Matthew — who had decided to hide there instead of in his own room — was puzzled but eager to accept the fact that Ronan and Declan weren’t trying to bite each other's’ faces off. They still kept Matthew in the middle as a sort of neutral zone as they exchanged memories about the day when the old family picture that Matthew was holding was taken. 

Everything burned in Ronan’s lungs: all the _sorrys_ he couldn’t say, all the regret he didn’t know how to express. Still, he found himself drifting off to sleep that night lulled by a weird and undeserved sense of reassurance.

The Lynch brothers had not been friends for what felt like forever, but maybe, just maybe, they could be again.

  
  


* * *

  
  


Half an hour after Sunday mass at St. Agnes, Declan had finished the mandatory rounds of pleasantries and catching up with old acquaintances. Ronan watched him approach from where he was leaning against Declan’s car, the passenger door open to accommodate Matthew’s legs as he lounged half inside and half outside the vehicle.

“When are you meeting with the Ganseys?” Declan asked, efficient but not pushy.

Ronan sighed deeply, already tugging at his tie. “Two hours. Helen is coming over right now. We’ll meet at Monmouth.” Whether he liked it or not, he had agreed to meet her and talk in the afternoon. It would have sounded markedly more like an interrogation if it weren’t for Gansey, who stressed that he was going to be there to complete the picture with his _own_ much-needed answers.

“Okay. Good luck.” Declan smiled sideways, the tilt of his lips barely there, like a concealed trap. He stopped midway through getting into the car, Matthew already buckled up and goodbyes all in place. “If things go south, send her to me. I’ll deal with it.”

Ronan clenched his teeth, still used to recoiling and fighting against the honest reassurance of not having to navigate a slippery slope alone. He kicked some small stones on the pavement before lifting his eyes to look at Declan. “I will. But things will be fucking fine, I’ll manage,” he replied, curt but completely honest.

“Then you just need to tell me how it goes. See you next Sunday.” Declan got into the car and started it in a smooth sequence, leaving Ronan a moment to tap back and forth with Matthew against the window glass before the car started moving. 

Standing in the church parking lot, Ronan watched them driving away towards DC and drew another long breath before moving. He circled the familiar ground of the church and its surroundings with more attention than he had time to give before the service. The Hondayota hadn’t been there then and still wasn’t. 

He swore softly under his breath, restrained by the sacred ground. Knowing how pointless and possibly pathetic it was didn’t stop him from getting back inside the church from the working entrance on the sacristy side and climbing the stairs up. The worn-out door on the very top floor was shut, and the cramped hallway — ceilings barely high enough for him to stand straight — echoed with silence.

Ronan knocked twice, then waited. Then again, and waited. A third time, more insistently, and waited. Fifteen minutes later he left with no answer, trying to refrain from punching the door, the wall, or random objects in his path.

Adam was not in.

  
  


* * *

  
  


By the time Helen left Monmouth Manufacturing to go back to whatever institutional duty she was entertaining herself with this week, it was already pitch black outside. Both Ronan and Gansey were so drained that even Gansey’s strictness relented and they ended up drinking a can of beer each — it was different, with Gansey there, less guilty, less desperate, less out-of-control — sitting on the floor with their backs against the side of Gansey’s bed.

“Your fucking sister is a nightmare, man,” Ronan reiterated, not for the first time since they’d met. “Do you think she even believed us? You know, the truth being weirder than a lie and all that shit.”

Gansey actually looked pensive, taking off his glasses to drag his free hand over his face. “I reckon she did, if only _because_ it’s so weird. No one lies with that many details.”

“Declan thinks she already knew the answer. At least, part of the answer,” Ronan said, looking ahead at the abandoned clutter in the warehouse.

“That’s quite possible. The way she covered for our absence required a lot of contact with different people involved.” Gansey shrugged a little. He put his glasses back on, slowly and silently, before looking at Ronan. “Was it all true, though? Even when you told her that you can’t dream anymore?”

The question rang into the silence of the wide building. Ronan clenched his fingers around the can and took a long sip. “I don’t fucking lie,” he answered.

“Does Declan know?” Ronan could hear how how curious Gansey was over whether he had spoken with his brother lately even without his directly addressing it.

“No,” he snapped, but given enough time to consider the concept he managed to elaborate some more. “He’s fixing a lot of stuff. Again. Maybe we’ll find a way to have a funeral for Mom. Then...then I’ll fucking tell him, I guess.” Some other time, he might have snipped sarcastically about how disappointed Declan was going to be, but he didn’t feel sure about a lot of things anymore.

Maybe some of the layers of turmoil he was experiencing showed on his face, because Gansey dragged himself a bit closer and pressed their shoulders together. Ronan put down the can and just reclined his head on the corner of the bed, looking at the ceiling, but he didn’t squirm away.  
He half-expected Gansey to start interrogating him about everything happening to him, and why, and how, and _how did it make him feel_ , just because Gansey was Gansey and couldn’t help himself. Maybe he didn’t know so clearly what _this_ Gansey — Gansey-after-Glendower, Gansey-after-death — was, because he was left with silence but not denied the bliss of his companionship.

After several minutes, he let himself slide down a bit and lean more heavily against Gansey’s arm. He found himself murmuring to Gansey about his brothers, about Friday night at the Barns, about missed bits of conversation he’d never gotten around to sharing with him just because there was never _time_ in the last few months. Everything was fractured and mismatched, but Gansey just listened. 

This version of Gansey was also apparently a Gansey who _slept_. Ronan dragged him gently to lay on top of the bed instead of beside it when he felt his head lolling in renewed silence.

Gansey blinked up at him while Ronan covered him with his duvet. Ronan had seen him falling asleep enough times by now that he knew the incoherent and unfocused quality of his eyes by heart. Maybe the possibility of him not remembering this later was enough to push Ronan to rip out the words he couldn’t say aloud earlier: “If losing everything else made you live, it was fucking worth it.”

That night, Ronan stole one of Gansey’s favourite contemplation spots while he slept on his bed a few feet away. Laying in the middle of the cardboard Henrietta with his legs straight and arms open along the space of the two main streets crossing, he stared at the distant cracks and discolored girders above him until they lost focus. He wasn’t blasting his music as he would have done in his own room, but he still felt himself fade away, falling through his grasp on reality rather than falling asleep. 

As yesterday, and the day before, and the week before, there was only darkness waiting for him on the other side. Tonight, however, there was something more structured about it, more shifting. Everything was black over black over black though, and Ronan only had the _perception_ of movement rather than a visualization of it. He was in the dark, or he _was_ the darkness, with no physicality associated with his sense of self.

He didn’t know how long he lingered in this dream — if it was even a dream — but the more he stayed the more he yearned for _something_ , the more he wanted to feel something other than this vague darkness. Then something fluttered beside his ear, reminding him of Chainsaw’s wings when she landed on his shoulder, and even in this darkness he must have had a heart because Ronan felt it swell and ache.

He woke up in the same position he’d fallen asleep in on the unforgiving floor of Monmouth, the sweat on his forehead drying in the chilly air. His body was heavy, so heavy, and he ended up just blinking slowly, his head turned to the side. 

In the grey morning light, his left arm was still stretched between the rows of miniature buildings. His hand was clenched tight, but between his fingers several raven feathers pointed proudly outwards.

Immobilized as he was, Ronan’s laughter bubbled in his chest without an outlet.

  
  


* * *

  
  


Slowly, steadily, the gears of his life after the breaking point of their quest started spinning back into motion.

His realizations about the last year had left him wary and sorely aware that he only had two settings: apathetic and ballistic. He couldn’t afford either, not again. So he shut up about the feathers and planned a way to break the news to the only person who had ever worked extensively with him and his dreaming, the only one who could possibly understand Cabeswater as well as he did.

The issue of Adam simply not being available, however, was more of a problem than he initially thought it would be.

On Tuesday he pestered Gansey about it, since he was still avoiding stepping foot in Aglionby by milking his debrief excuse for all it was worth. 

“I think Adam is catching up with things, Ronan,” Gansey replied. He was striking that weird balance between trying to make Ronan manageable and trying to manage Adam. He had never had to do those two things at the same time, though, and if Ronan had been more attentive he might have noticed it. 

As it was, he just sneered “ _Things_ ” with utter disdain and let anger fill him to the brim.

He soaked in his rage, distress filling his sleeping hours in a way that only produced inanimate, soulless objects. Just because they were back from that stupid house didn’t mean everything was fine, that the regular routine could take over, that Adam could just slip away from him like it was _nothing_. Especially not after he’d made Ronan believe that it was _something_ , after the kisses and the caresses and Adam’s _damn_ heart thumping under Ronan’s ear on his chest.

He was of course aware of how bad Adam could get when he slipped into automation. This last thought only occurred to him after long contemplation, but once it popped into his mind he couldn’t shake it off. 

He sat at Nino’s on Thursday, almost at closing time, pestering Blue during an uncharacteristically late shift in the middle of the week. At some point his comments on her routine, her homework, her school, her jobs, her plans, must have become unbearably obnoxious. She crossed the empty diner and stopped abruptly beside his booth, dumping a plastic container full of forks on his table with a terrible metallic clatter.

“Now, before I make you swallow each and every one of these, go and talk with Adam!” Blue sounded properly threatening in a way that spurred a horrible surge of euphoria in Ronan. It was hardly surprising that she’d managed to hit the core of the matter so squarely.

“Fucking gladly, maggot...oh wait, maybe not, because he’s got better things to do!” he growled back, his rage simmering to cover the anxiety that was running bone-deep in him.

“Let me get this straight. Are you just whining because he’s not paying attention to you or are you worried about him? You know, like a sensible human being?” Her words brought an evident challenge, a sort of unsaid _What do you want from him?_ that recalled just how much everyone relied on Adam.

The bubble of worry burst into burnt-out shame deep in Ronan’s stomach. “Of course I’m fucking worried about him! Gansey can only reply with _work_ if you ask what he’s doing!” The conversation was turning into a shouting match, but it was weirdly satisfied to finally have an outlet.

“Then stop acting like it’s only about him being too busy to cater to you and _act_ like you’re worried! If you can find a way to annoy me, than you can annoy him too!” Blue’s gaze spelt _checkmate_ when Ronan couldn’t find a verbal reply within the next five seconds. She picked up the plastic container and marched back to the kitchen like a victorious soldier.

Her words felt like something stuck between his ribs, another reality check that he had to confront. 

Ronan spent his entire Friday dissecting everything he knew for sure about Adam Parrish and his behavior; one year’s worth of observation mixed with all the doubts and unknown waters of their current reality.

By the time he got into his car, it was the dead of the night but evidently not the end of Adam’s working hours, given the absence of the Hondayota at St. Agnes. He knew where to find him though, because Blue had been right about this as well.

Ronan drove to Boyd’s garage at full speed and blasting music, priorities in check: Adam destroying himself was what was really at stake. Ronan’s uncertainties could be easily solved if he stopped the fabric of his reality from unraveling. He was going to Adam, and he was going to make it better, because Ronan knew that he could. It was the best way to start.

The possibility of dreaming had sparkled like the North Star in the uncertain commotion of his thoughts. Having Adam back by the end of that night illuminated an entirely new series of constellations.

  
  


* * *

  
  


It was a Sunday afternoon again, brighter than the previous one and suffused with brisk autumn air full of possibility, when they adjourned for another meeting at Monmouth Manufacturing.

This time Adam and Blue were present, sitting on either side of Gansey on the edge of his bed in the open space. Blue and Gansey were marvelling over the small trinkets that Ronan had managed to dream within the week. Adam was just following him with his eyes as he paced up and down the space in front of them. 

There wasn’t much to look at — four black raven feathers, a dried aspen leaf reduced to spidery veins, a small flat stone worn by water — but it was more than nothing. Ronan was irrationally proud of his creations: miracle crops from a barren field.

“So you can actually dream — like, still dream,” Blue murmured, a soft smile blooming on her face as she turned the stone in front of the light. “But is it like before? You just fall asleep and perform?”

 _Before_ and _after_ were the language they spoke now, so it was impossible to resent Blue for formulating it the way she had. “It’s...slippery. I can’t really control it. Everything is dark but sometimes...it isn’t. And when it isn’t, I get something back, but it’s like a fucking blind guess.” He gestured at the variety of useless objects in their hands, still pacing.

He stopped abruptly when Adam stretched his leg to intercept him, turning to face him with something that was only half a glare. “You’re making me dizzy, Lynch,” Adam said, innocent and wicked at the same time. 

“Cry me a fucking river, Parrish,” Ronan grumbled in reply, but still got closer to him when Adam bent his leg around his calf as if to drag him forward. From the corner of his eyes, he could tell that Blue and Gansey were looking at them and then at each other knowingly, but it was far more interesting to observe Adam from above. After having spent most of yesterday sleeping at the Barns and then begrudgingly wolfing down three-quarters of all the takeaway Ronan had ordered, Adam looked far more himself than before. 

Adam turned to the other two, seemingly satisfied with Ronan’s stillness between the twist of his legs. “I think we drained the leyline worse than ever, and sacrificing Cabeswater as a sort of ‘physical dreamscape’ made everything lose structure.” He elaborated to them the same conclusion he had drawn the day before after grilling Ronan for details for _hours_.

“That’s a fascinating theory,” Gansey murmured, the skeleton of the aspen leaf turning on the skin between his thumb and index fingers. He sounded so _Gansey_ that everyone else in the room could only breathe and listen. “Do you plan on exploring it?” Gansey continued, the question directed at Ronan.

“Of course I plan to fucking explore it, Gansey. Which brings us to the order of the day,” Ronan replied, mocking his formal tone. “Maggot, do you think we can talk about it with your mother and the rest of the coven or are you going to get maimed if we even just _think_ about it?”

Blue wrinkled her nose at him for _coven_ , but still weighed the request with care. “Maybe, but an honest question is going to be received better than another pile of lies,” she replied finally, playing absently with one of the loose strings of the hybrid T-shirt she had on. “The situation is...complicated, though,” she admitted.

They all looked at each other for a long second in an unexpressed wave of consideration for the emptiness of 300 Fox Way, for the Grey Man’s absence, for all the warnings they had dodged.

“We’re about to go there for dinner. I can test the waters,” Blue offered, her expression shifting into something more stern. “If you come and talk to them later I don’t want to hear any complaining, okay? You can’t dodge this one by putting me in the middle.”

Ronan bristled, nervously twisting his leather bands in internal recognition of how the statement wasn’t actually _unfair_ , considering his record. “I’m not fucking dodging, okay? If they’re okay with that, I’ll come,” he said gruffly, sliding his gaze over both Blue and Gansey.

“We’ll come,” Adam added in all seriousness. Ronan thought he saw bits of some convoluted magician plan lurking in the shadows of his expression, but they remained unsaid.

Gansey looked at the two of them with the same stare he would use to dissect a puzzling inscription in a medieval manuscript. “If we’ve got a deal then I suppose a conversation would be possible,” he conceded slowly, but quickly looked at Blue to make sure she was nodding in confirmation. “Could you maybe...lay low on autonomous exploration and experimentation, in the meantime?” he added. The layers of concern in his tone were manifest but not elaborated upon.

It was difficult to suppress the urge to roll his eyes, so Ronan simply didn’t. “Says fucking _who_ ,” he retorted, and Gansey had the decency to look castigated about his own ‘autonomous explorations.’ Ronan wasn’t really trying to bite, though, and while he rocked a bit on his feet his position in the bend of Adam’s knee kept him mostly still. He huffed. “I can’t control the dreaming, but I won’t fucking push it until we know what we’re doing, okay?”

For as grumpy as his concession had been, it seemed to satisfy both Blue and Gansey, and Blue made to stand up. “Fair enough. So, we’re off to our next battle, I would say.” She sounded twistedly cheerful, still spinning the stone in her hand. She seemed to figure it out for herself, and made to hand it back to Ronan.

“Keep it, Maggot, show them the evidence.” He smiled thinly. Having to ask for support made something boil in his blood but receiving it without a second thought left a weird aftertaste in his mouth. 

He stayed still with Adam as he watched them go, wishing them good luck and reiterating advice to Gansey not to drink any tea. Then the main door closed off somewhere downstairs and it was just the two of them in the too-wide quiet of Monmouth Manufacturing.

Adam wore a pensive expression, eyes lost somewhere in the space that Blue and Gansey had occupied just seconds before. He looked unreachable in whatever whirlwind his thoughts were caught in, but his sock-clad foot bent to hook mindlessly around Ronan’s ankle all the same.

“Are you planning to keep me here for the rest of the evening, Parrish?” Ronan mused, trying to snap Adam out of it. “Unless you’re plotting shit like going back to work or whatever the fuck. In that case I’m planting myself here for good,” he added quickly.

Adam just snorted after a second, shaking his head and slowly withdrawing his leg. The movement was smooth but he didn’t look at Ronan to acknowledge what he was doing. “No, this morning while you were at mass was good enough,” Adam replied, standing up and taking his turn to wander around the open space, towards one of the oversized factory windows. “How was it, by the way?” he added, as if mass was something that promoted much variability.

“The usual,” Ronan replied, hooking his thumbs in the corners of his jeans pockets, “Declan has been surprisingly decent recently.” He was more flippant than he should have been about it, but the half-formed confessions he had thrown at Adam in the last couple of days had always been enough to win him an attentive stare.

“Is Matthew not coming back?” Adam asked after a moment of silence.

Ronan could only shake his head. “Not now. There’s no point. We already shipped him off once, we might as well not fuck around anymore. Declan will keep him safe.” It was out of his mouth before he could think about it properly, and he was left to contemplate how true the statement was and how easily he could believe it without the stain of grudge.

Adam sighed, a half-smile not completely formed on his lips, and stayed silent for a bit. “I missed a lot of stuff while I wasn’t here. I’m sorry.” He sounded like he had carefully polished that thought over and over, trying to refine it and being unable to come up with anything better. There was something tired in the way he sat back down on the wide brick windowsill, the discolored glass of the window backdropping him.

“Jesus, Parrish.” Ronan shook his head, getting closer again. “I’ve got shit going on, you’ve got shit going on, we’re a whole clusterfuck of people with a lot of shit going on. It’s okay.” It was always a tricky balance to be earnest without being aggressive, not to say _I’m not a fucking responsibility on your checklist_ and watch everything devolve into chaos. The switch was there. He could, but he _wouldn’t_. The thought made him feel strangely powerful.

There was a peculiar, twisted measure of consideration floating in Adam’s stare. For all the time Ronan spent observing it was always difficult to pinpoint what was shifting in Adam’s mind before a new, spotlessly executed plan was unleashing itself. Adam just echoed him with a soft “Okay,” but reached for the collar of Ronan’s shirt to grab it.

Getting yanked down and around to be kissed was a strange new routine in Ronan’s life. Definitely not the type he was going to complain about. He only had a moment to properly enjoy the kiss, one of his hands barely buried in Adam’s hair where he wanted it, when Adam leaned back a bit. 

“I’ll fix it, I promise,” he murmured, stubborn and unbreakable at his core in a way that made Ronan’s pulse jump.

Ronan combed his fingers through Adam’s dusty brown curls and pushed them back from his face. “Nah. We’ll deal with it. If it goes to shit so be it. But it’s the second round. We’ll do better,” Ronan replied, resolution colouring his tone. His smile sharpened gradually as he saw his sureness reflected in Adam’s eyes.

He bent down to kiss him again. Every allowed taste, every time Adam opened his mouth and slid their tongues together, rang with the wonder of an exposed secret that hadn’t detonated in his face. Adam was _awake_ now, and Ronan could feel it in the same instinctual way he could feel a gear change approaching during a race. Friday night still hung there between them, in Adam’s grip on his shirt, in Adam’s breath against his skin. The more he thought about how disconcerting the past weeks had been the more Ronan wanted to _shift gears_ , right now.

He felt Adam’s free hand tugging him by the belt loops of his jeans and his blood _soared_.

The wet sound of their mouths separating didn’t help the situation. Ronan grabbed Adam’s wrist to stop his hand. It took him a moment, Adam’s breath oscillating against his face, to understand how exactly that gesture could be read. 

They stared at each other, eyes wide for two very different reasons, and Ronan knew he _needed_ to articulate what was going on in his mind but found himself too full of memories — of Adam’s slurred voice, of Adam’s possessive grip, of Adam’s hand too dry and demanding — and he just _couldn’t_.

“Now,” he panted, worked up without apparent reason, “now _you_ let me.”

And maybe Ronan was shit at words and shit at pacing himself, but Adam’s stunned silence when he dropped to his knees in front of him was enough. 

Ronan never backed out after the flash of a green light set his mind on fire, so he didn’t now, sliding his hand down from Adam’s shoulder to the crotch of his trousers. The tense outline there wasn’t going anywhere — especially not considering the sharp intake of breath from Adam above him when he pressed against it with his palm — but Ronan still rushed to unfasten buttons and zippers and everything in between.

He had never seen Adam with his clothes off, he had never seen Adam _like this_. The thought bordered on obsession and Ronan just dragged everything off, catching Adam by surprise enough that he even lifted his hips to facilitate the process.

Soon the bundle of clothes was pooled near Adam’s ankles and all that was left were his strong, naked legs slightly parted to let Ronan’s shoulders fit in between, unevenly tanned in contrast with the reddish purple of the bricks. Ronan was _certain_ this counted as a spiritual experience — the type only he could have, in crude proximity to Adam’s half hard cock. 

“Ronan…” Adam hissed, almost desperately, under the clasp of Ronan’s hands on his sides, “...you don’t have...”

Oh, but he _wanted_ to.

He couldn’t push anything past the furious thumping of his heart against his sternum, so he just leaned forward and placed his lips on the tip — because Ronan Lynch never got into a fistfight if he wasn’t ready to swing first. 

“ _Christ_!” Adam swore from above them, and Ronan could only think _yes, exactly_ at the feeling of the smooth skin hardening further against his lips.

His mind full of the memory of Adam opening his mouth against his neck, Ronan opened his mouth to deepen the contact, only to find himself with Adam’s cock jumping awkwardly against his face. He frowned and leaned his right arm more heavily against Adam’s leg in order to move his hand and wrap his fingers around the base. Adam’s breath became even more laboured and a ripple spasmed along his muscles when Ronan finally managed to drag his tongue along his length. 

It was _so much_ of everything he had always wanted. Sensations pulsed through him rather than in him, and everything was _warm, damp, crowded, wet, smooth, hard, Adam_. He longed for more even though he was already overwhelmed past the point of thinking reasonably about what he was doing.

Ronan had little firsthand experience with sex, but everyone who survived past twelve years old could tell you that licking and kissing and lightly sucking wasn’t the _essence_ of what you were supposed to do with a dick and your mouth. His mouth was _itching_ for it, so he straightened his back, opened wide and let Adam slide inside.

Adam made a sound like he had been stabbed in the ribs and took hold of Ronan’s shoulder with a grip so evidently mindless it was delicious. A fraction of his mind wanted to steal every reaction and treasure it, make it as solid as a dream ready to be brought back. Nothing had prepared him for the electric current that sparked in his body at the drag of Adam’s cock against the roof of his mouth. 

The tendons of his hand clenched reflexively, and he dragged back slightly. He drew a breath and did it again. The sensitivity was so intense he wasn’t even sure it was pleasant but Adam groaned above him and Ronan could only moan in response.

The grip on his shirt trembled. Adam was too close to him, almost curled around him, for Ronan be able to easily look up and check, but his breathing was off — too fast, too deep — and strangely contained at the same time. 

Ronan’s mouth was pooling with saliva, he could feel it drooling against his own hand. He closed his mouth better around Adam’s length and sucked lightly, just as he would swallow around nothing — but now it was _definitely_ around something.

Adam slurred something absolutely incoherent and Ronan was so entranced by the whole situation that he just took it as encouragement. He did it again, feeling bolder, only to be stopped by the sudden press of Adam’s palm against his forehead, dragging him back a bit.

Ronan let his mouth drop open again, and went to the trouble of looking up, confused. Adam’s chest was rising and falling so fully it was difficult to understand where all that air was going, given the controlled way he breathed through his nose. His cheek were so _red_ Ronan felt a rush of heat over his body in return. 

“Teeth,” Adam gritted out after several seconds, letting his hand slide from Ronan’s forehead in a frantic caress.

Ronan suddenly sobered in a sympathetic moment of horror. “ _Shit_ , sorry,” he murmured. Speaking with his lips still against Adam must have sounded apologetic enough — Adam moaned softly and it was difficult to feel rejected — but he bent his head again to swirl his tongue around the tip of his cock for good measure.

When he felt Adam’s abs relax under the hand on his hips, he gave it another go, trying not to get distracted by the overall feeling and actively minding his teeth. It was more difficult than it sounded, but everything was wet, and sliding along was easy. Then Adam’s hand trembled near his mouth and pushed softly against his lips, tentative as if he was approaching a challenging calculus exercise. But Adam was nothing if not brilliant. Ronan’s lips slid between Adam’s skin and his teeth and everything clicked together.

Between the self-combusting fog of having Adam’s fingers and Adam’s cock around his mouth at the same time, the realization that _this is how you do it_ ran through Ronan’s mind. He sagged more on his knees, falling into the repetitive movement somewhat dizzily. It was easy to just close his eyes, in the shadow formed by Adam’s chest canting forward once more. It should have felt claustrophobic but instead was unbelievably intimate.

Adam was all trembling tension around him, still mostly silent in a way that was hardly a surprise after how the things at Boyd’s had gone down. Ronan wanted more — so much _more_ — and he tried to convey it in the dragging of his fingers against the tense skin on Adam’s hip and around the base of his cock. 

He became vaguely aware of the shaking of his own back when he felt Adam’s hand against it — over his shirt at first, then fumbling under, lightly scratching. Ronan drew a stifled breath from his nose, as if Adam’s nails on his skin brought him back to his own body. His insides twisted in response to the sensitivity of the roof of his mouth. 

_Slide back, slide forth._

He was so hard it was _killing him_.

Reflexively trying to squirm away from the sensation and make it better for Adam at the same time, he let his mouth drop open a bit more and swallowed more fully. The pressure on the back of his mouth was blissfully neutral for a second, Adam’s breath hiccuped in a promising way, and everything seemed fine.

Of course, the moment he tried to do it a second time, his throat actually got the message that something was there and Ronan jumped at the gagging feeling, releasing Adam again to catch his breath

“Ronan, God, are you..?” Adam sounded slurred, incomplete, hanging on a tenuous trail of control, and it was _amazing_ , even though giving head was turning into a mess of complications.

“Fine. More,” he murmured faintly, not so coherent and surprisingly close to begging himself. He dove in again, thoroughly enjoying the punched-out moan Adam gave in response. He paused for just a second to enjoy the mindless affection of Adam’s hand caressing his forehead and then down the side of his neck. 

Ronan could do it and he _would_ do it, but sucking cock entailed a lot more than he’d expected. He let go of Adam’s hips, leaving just the hand at the base of his cock, and twisted and pulled blindly at his own jeans until the pressure on his furious erection relented. 

Adam’s knees were pressed tight around his shoulders, enough to keep him where he was regardless of what he did or didn’t do. After another couple of excruciating drags on the roof of his mouth, Ronan just gave in and buried his hand in his own boxers and around himself.

_Slide back, slide forth — stroke._

It if felt amazing before, now it felt absolutely _perfect_.

He groaned around Adam’s cock — muffled in a way Adam and his love of silence might appreciate — and closed his eyes again.

“You’re _touching_ yourself, fucking…” Whatever Adam was trying to articulate, to Ronan’s absolute delight, ended up choked around a prolonged _nnngh_. 

Adam’s hips canted forward as his self-control seemed to snap. Ronan just took it, through the wet mess of saliva around his hand and lips, as he jerked himself off with enough dryness in comparison that it felt almost like an echo of Adam doing it to him. 

Ronan didn’t get any warning besides the subtle pulse of wet skin against his tongue before Adam was coming in his mouth — too hot and thick to be pleasant, too rewarding to be unpleasant. Trying to swallow won him a _shockingly_ loud moan from Adam and another rebellion of his throat; stubborn as ever. He coughed twice and then licked, regardless of the taste.

“Ronan — _Ronan_ — shit…” Adam was grasping him so tightly, even though he was definitely not going anywhere.

“Adam —ah!” Dropping his head heavily against Adam’s naked thigh, Ronan was mostly only aware that he was _coming_ , and stroked himself faster until every part of him felt shaky and locking and ready to collapse. Everything apart from where Adam half-caressed, half-scratched at his shoulders.

For several minutes, white spots swam behind his closed eyelids. The first half-coherent thought that followed was that, between the two of them, they were going to use up all of the oxygen in Monmouth Manufacturing and asphyxiate once and for all. 

When he opened his eyes, Adam had straightened his back from where he had curled over Ronan in his lap. It felt like a century had passed from when he had unfastened Adam’s trousers but the quality of the light around them was still that of the indistinct time just after dusk.

Disregarding how much of a mess they had made, Adam continued to stroke Ronan’s face and neck. It was difficult to feel guilty about closing his eyes again, and waiting to catch his breath some more. It was an embarrassing amount of time before they separated and went together into the cramped bathroom to make themselves look human again.

Adam was the one to break the companionable but slightly stupefied silence. “I think Gansey’s just afraid you’ll spiral into some dream-mania-phase.”

Ronan lifted his face from the towel, raising both eyebrows for good measure. “Does your brain ever fucking stop?” He regretted speaking almost immediately, because his voice rasped out of his control, hoarse. 

Adam stared at him with a sort of amazement before clearing his own throat and walking past him, knocking their shoulders together, laughter in his voice. “I’ll keep you in check, don’t worry.”  
  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If you're still alive by the end of this, congratulations! I'm personally moved and thank you so much for reading!
> 
> As always, I live for your support, so feel free to:  
> \- kudos  
> \- comment  
> \- drop crazy asks on my [Tumblr](http://seekthemist.tumblr.com)  
> \- send me messenger pigeons to comment on the awkwardness of my smut scenes 
> 
> Stay tuned for more in hopefully 10ish days!


	4. The Magic

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The willingness to bring Cabeswater back, and the dreams of the Greywaren with it, pushes the gang to explore untested waters.  
> Conflict wind up and unravel in the process.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> YES, I'M BACK.
> 
> I want to start to say with a big, fat _I'm so sorry_ , because this chapter took insensibly long to come to life, partially because horrible real life obligation, partially because I had to put myself in peculiar states of mind to write some bits of it and I had moments at the end of last year in which I just _couldn't_.
> 
> I hope that the fact that this chapter is a TOTAL ABSOLUTE MONSTER (19,000 words more or less) makes up for it.
> 
> On this note, handle it with care, and be absolutely thankful for [Luz](http://archiveofourown.org/users/Luz/pseuds/Luz)'s existence. She beta-edited it all and gave me tons of feed back, she's just too good to be true! And of course, I'm incredibly grateful to you all, for sticking to this story <3
> 
> Now off you go for _so much plot, you have no idea_!

  
  
  


There are two kinds of problems in the world: the ones you can figure out yourself and the ones that get easier with the help of someone with more skill and knowledge.

Adam Parrish had based his identity upon being a solver of both, pacing his life by struggles and what it took to overcome them. The “do it yourself” option was his default and he was reluctant to assign his problems to the second category because doing so tended to come with a price. 

The Cabeswater enigma became riskier and more slippery the more he and his friends worked on it, to the point that seeking help was the only feasible option. Sitting on a slightly wobbly chair in the kitchen of 300 Fox Way didn’t feel like something he would come to regret or that he should file under _debt liability_ , but it was still missing the sense of personal achievement Adam craved.

“Okay, so…” Adam tried to start, hesitating as he turned a dessert fork in his hand. “Your psychic powers are bound to the ley line, Lynch’s dreaming is bound to the ley line...and both have been problematic recently.” Summarizing was less satisfying than usual, incomplete.

“To put it mildly, it’s as temperamental as the Snake and it’s bad for business,” Calla grumbled from where she leaned against the counter, contrary as ever.

“Calla…” Maura let the reproach pass through the conversation’s background, shaking her head at Adam as if to reassure him.

“Or maybe it’s totally disconnected and your spider senses aren’t tingling because they’re bullshit.” To no one’s surprise, Ronan couldn’t manage to resist bickering with Calla just as they did whenever they were in the same room. The only reason he wasn’t pacing and knocking stuff around was that he was seated with Adam by his side and Opal on the floor between them, biting viciously into an empty can of beans. The arrangement might or might not been planned by Adam, who was _really_ trying to keep things civil.

“Are you arguing over there?!” Blue’s voice piped up from the living room. Gansey’s followed promptly: “Does it mean that we can come back over?”

Adam ran his hand over his face for a second, staring down at his meticulously cleaned dish where Calla’s pie of the day had sat. “Absolutely not!” he called, adding “I’m trying to think, stop being distracting!” as an afterthought a moment later.

Ronan, looking guilty for his contrariness and eying the frustration on Adam’s face, nervously spun his own fork on the tabletop. “Parrish, don’t rip my fucking face off, but we seem to be a bit stuck.” 

Adam still kind of wanted to, but mostly because he recognized the truth in Ronan’s statement. They had no Greywaren with more experience than Ronan to clear the way and understand the rules. Maura and Calla were kind enough to listen to them and support their theories with what they knew about the ley lines, but their expertise had a different focus. 

“If I could just sense the connection between Cabeswater and the ley line like before, maybe we wouldn’t be,” Adam grumbled, a bit reproachful. He needed the impossible, the amazing, and instead Cabeswater had just left him _human human human_. Ronan silently moved his leg under the table to cross their ankles together, while Opal leaned her full weight against the side of his chair as though they were animals attuned to his distress. Adam found himself exhaling a bit, but it was difficult to just let it go.

Calla tutting in the background prompted him to raise his head, only to find both her and Maura looking at him in that vaguely piercing way that gave Adam the impression he’d missed an important part of a sentence that had never actually been spoken out loud.

“You still have Persephone’s deck, don’t you?” Maura asked, gentle and efficient as usual.

“Yeah, I know maybe it’s...” _wasted on me, now_ — he couldn’t really say it — “...time to give it back to you.” The admission was still true enough, even with the sentence changed midway through.

Maura smiled, further complicating the mismatched feeling her gaze provoked. “Not what I meant. I think you can still work on your own readings, Adam.”

Adam felt his mind gaping with inward amazement; but he was nothing if not contained, especially in the face of an alluring promise, so he just tilted his head minutely to the side. “Can I?”

“It won’t be as easy as when you were knees-deep in the ley line business, pretty boy,” Calla said brusquely. “You’ll have to put _your_ effort into it. You won’t just be overhearing, you’ll need to tune in.”

As vague as it sounded, it kind of made _sense_. Most importantly, it gave new focus to all the hours Adam had spent scrying and reading tarot. He could be practical about it, and practicality was his element.

That was how he found himself sitting at the circular table in the middle of the 300 Fox Way Business Living Room, shuffling cards and trying to put in _his effort_. Cabeswater’s absence was evident every step of the way, in the echoing gaps between his thoughts and the inescapable physicality of his own body. Every card just felt like worn-out paper, every shuffle of the deck as mechanic as the previous one.

He focused on the inane chattering coming from the couch where Gansey, Blue and Ronan sat, familiar voices and pronunciations lingering until entire sentences merged in a stretched, meaningless way. Something vibrated along the veins of his wrist while he shuffled the deck once again, but it was gone by the time he started trying to arrange the cards.

His own drawn-out sigh covered the soft sound of the window opening behind him, but not the whistling breath that followed on his neck. 

“ _Magician_ …”

The hairs on his nape stood up one after another with every vowel. Adam scrambled to get up and turned around so fast that the chair clattered on the floor, immediately silencing the others.

Gwenllian, perched on the windowsill with half of her long body hanging outside, screeched a cacophonous laugh at her own successful attempt at startling Adam. 

“What?!” Adam snapped, feeling remarkably on edge all of a sudden, too concentrated on the crazy thumping of his heart.

“You can’t see out if you’re all in, all twistedly twisting _magician with no magic_ ,” she rambled, dangling her arms and making no sense whatsoever as usual. 

“ _Suuuure_.” Blue was the one to reply, dragging her vowels in obvious mockery. “Now never do that again, Jesus. It’s not funny and you just sound stupid!”

Adam was still trying to find a proper way to reply without exposing how restless Gwenllian’s words had made him feel when an echoing caw from outside marked Opal’s approach. Gwenllian let out another screeching laugh and jumped back out into the garden, running away mirthfully while apparently being chased by the dream satyr girl.

“I’m not fucking telling her to stop,” Ronan said preemptively, lingering close to Adam as if to assess his status. “Actually — you know what, kick her ass, brat!” he called into the backyard, where Opal half-screamed half-cawed in reply before Gansey closed the window off definitively.

“I swear to God, she’s gotten even more annoying these last few weeks,” Blue grumbled, staring up at Adam’s face from several inches below. “Are you okay, Adam?”

Adam shrugged, trying to physically shake off the adrenaline high. Getting startled by otherworldly voices had been way too strongly correlated with ending up in bad places recently. “Fine, but my concentration’s gone now,” he admitted in a huff, biting his words out. “She’s been doing that a lot?” He tilted his head to the window as if the overall situation could be described with a single gesture.

Blue’s sigh spoke for itself. She navigated back to the couch, dragging Gansey along. “On and off, when she dignifies us with her presence. I try to talk to her about what happened sometimes, but it doesn’t work.”

“Her riddles and song are obscure even accounting for a certain familiarity with the Welsh vernacular,” Gansey added. The resident expert on medieval English was happily stopped on the track of the rant he was undoubtedly about to launch into by Blue sitting on his lap. A couple of months ago, the sight would have been unbearable for Adam, a testament of his resentment, envy, and greed whether he liked to admit it or not. Now, he just watched Ronan flopping down with all his long, uncaring limbs on the other corner of the couch and let his insides warm in the places he’d tried to keep empty before.

The conversation fell to how Blue’s return to school had been, which was always an entertaining business considering that several of her classmates had been inventing creative scenarios for her absence. In their defense, some were almost as crazy as the truth. Adam picked up the cards from the table and went to join them. With one knee pressed against Gansey’s leg, Blue using his thigh as an additional resting place, and Ronan’s side open for him to lean against, it was the closest Adam could feel to the quiet of the country house.

He let himself sink down, aimlessly shuffling the deck. The sense of restlessness that Gwenllian had provoked by startling him slowly faded. Half-twisted as he was, it was easy and almost discreet for Ronan’s arm to rest between the small of Adam’s back and the cushion of the couch. Normally he would have cared about making them both comfortable, but the slow drag of Ronan’s hand on the side of his hips and his fingers grazing the skin above the hem of his trousers was weirdly comforting. Adam didn’t want to burst the bubble. He let it expand instead, conscious of every point his body touched the people around him and little else. 

The tarot deck was cupped between his hands, resting close to his stomach. He dragged the tip of his index along the worn edge, lolling his head to the side towards Ronan’s shoulder to look down. Ronan exhaled, no louder than a normal breath but still echoing through Adam’s hearing ear. Something tingled from the vein of his wrist all the way down his hand and it stopped only when he drew two cards, unthinking. 

The twisted rays of the Sun were a splotch of brightness on one dark card and the sober face of the Emperor regarded him upside down from the other. Adam blinked. Gansey’s phone chirped with a message.

“Are we meeting someone else?” Adam heard himself murmur, just as Gansey happily announced that “Henry is going to come for dinner at Monmouth tonight.”

Adam looked at Gansey. Gansey looked back and then at Blue. Blue ignored Gansey but stared at Adam. Ronan was piercing a hole in the side of Adam’s head with his eyes so deep that there wasn’t even a point in reciprocating.

Then Blue grinned, exchanging an increasingly manic expression with Ronan, who grabbed Adam more firmly by the waist. Adam felt himself laughing and reached over with one hand when Gansey presented his fist. “Put it here, Parrish, _of course_ you could make it work out.”

“It’s a bit far from being worked out just yet, Gansey,” Adam tried to be sensible even while he kept the two cards close to his chest, as if to prove to himself that he could really still _do it_ , whatever _it_ was. “At this point, though, I think we need to meet Cheng for dinner,” he added, sensing the significance of a meeting tonight, like this.

Ronan groaned out loud, in obvious protestation. “Oh please,” Blue huffed in retort, “If we put up with you, then you have to put up with, like, anything and everything.”

“You wish, Maggot.” Ronan’s grin was as dangerous and sharp as ever, while he disentangled himself from Adam and the corner of the couch. “First of all, I’m not picking Cheng up at that fucking mockery of a maple syrup house. Come on, Parrish.” He turned towards Adam and offered his hand to help him up with his trademark mixture of tactile consideration and carefully constructed indifference. 

Adam grabbed Ronan’s hand halfway up the wrist, feeling the weight of Gansey’s stare, which had been following them since the first time they grabbed each other’s hands in the country house bed, but it was impossible to feel judged by it. “Don’t take any chances on the Pig stalling, Lynch, we will get there, with takeaway and a whole evening ahead,” Gansey warned. He made no sign of getting up, though, since Blue was still comfortably splayed on top of him, with his hand lodged in the bend of her knee ― like he was holding her, or she was warming his fingers.

Just a few months ago, the sight would have awoken something awful in Adam. Now that felt like an old life, abandoned in favour of a companionship so deep it was almost kinship. That, and the solid grip of Ronan’s fingers between his own, murmuring promises in which _known_ didn’t mean the same thing as _exposed_.

“Let’s see how far you get by the time we’re done dropping Opal back at the Barns,” Adam countered, wiggling the fingers of his free hand in a mockery of salute and following Ronan to the kitchen for the mandatory round of goodbyes.

He didn’t know why the schedule of their next movements felt so instinctively clear to him. Maybe it was the cards ― or maybe it was just the magic that had made its way beneath their gestures and habits.

  
  


* * *

  
  


The open space of Monmouth Manufacturing smelt vaguely of the cartons of Chinese takeaway sitting on top of some of the taller cardboard Henrietta buildings, which had been converted into a makeshift table for five unruly teens.

Adam was more full than he could afford to be considering the amount of money he’d contributed toward dinner, but he was steadfastly refusing to make himself feel guilty about it. After all, Henry had claimed that there was so much food because of leftovers from the Vancouver crew, and there was no point in wasting. The greasy overly-fried feeling that still lingered at the back of his mouth wasn’t helping how stretched and aloof he was feeling, even while his body burned eagerly through the excess calories. He had left to wash his face in the hopes it would help but now that he was back on the floor, cross-legged and surrounded by a semicircle of cards, the pressure behind his eyes was still there.

Gansey was entertaining Henry’s near-morbid fascination with all their psychic proceedings, with the help of Blue (with years as her household’s resident non-psychic under her belt) and unexpectedly Ronan (providing snarky remarks and some dreamer insight.) Their chatter had been familiar and lulling, but the more frustrated Adam became with his readings the more the background noise echoed in his head, empty and redundant. It might have been because of his lone working ear, but something told him otherwise.

“Okay, stop,” he piped up, inadvertently brusque enough to win total and sudden silence.

“Sorry,” Gansey supplied, after they all looked at him with expressions ranging between scolded children and startled adults. “Would you rather we be silent? We didn’t mean to disturb you.” 

Adam huffed at the utter _Ganseyness_ of the reply, unsure if he should feel honored or offended by his considerate tone. “No, go on, you were in full lecture mode with Cheng,” he said after a second, trying to soften his own tone. “It’s just...it’s not working. Something is missing, like, not clicking,” he struggled to explain. He dragged his hands up and down the sides of his nose, while helplessly staring at the messy array of cards he had drawn from the central deck. 

“What do you need?” Blue asked, always sensible and so comfortable dealing with reading issues.

Adam smiled sideways at the question. _What did he need, indeed_. It was a concept that always started too many irrational answers throbbing within his chest. “Come here,” he felt himself reply, before even realizing that he was.

Blue shuffled closer agreeably without even bothering to get up from the floor. “You see, Henry, this is how it works when you’re a _mirror-loudspeaker-dealbreaker_ and you’re surrounded by weird people,” she joked in the process. She flopped beside him, their arms touching slightly. Adam felt himself inhale and exhale deeply.

“Thanks...not just you, though.” Adam spoke again without really considering the words, his eyes still on the cards spread around him.

“Who else do you need?” Blue’s voice was soft on his left.

Adam ran his tongue over suddenly dry lips. “Just all of you.”

“Well, helloooo,” Henry dragged out, singing along his vowels, “That’s the kind of line a man wants to hear, Parrish!”

They all relocated around him, Henry like an eager puppy invited to a party for the first time, Gansey snickering to himself over the innuendo with less composure than he should have, and Ronan proclaiming loudly “What about you fuck off, Cheng?”

“That really wasn’t what I meant,” Adam admitted, self-conscious enough to feel embarrassed about it. They had shared a bed for more than a week, there wasn’t much of a pretense to keep up about having a ordinary platonic relationship.

“Go figure, not everyone’s a devious little fucker,” Ronan mumbled, sparing little thought about where to position himself. Blue was on Adam’s left side, Gansey on his right, and Henry sat gingerly in front of him as if to take the best seat in the house. Sliding behind Adam’s back, their shoulders grazing against each other, Ronan caressed Adam’s forearm in a smooth movement.

“Can we please appreciate the irony of _Ronan_ calling someone else devious?” Blue mused. 

Ronan clicked his tongue, the sound coming from closer to Adam’s hearing ear than he’d expected. Adam hadn’t realized he had been cold until he found himself leaning back against the warmth of Ronan’s chest, which welcomed him without question. Whatever argument had been building up in Adam burst like a soap bubble, Ronan wrapping one arm around Adam with his odd balance of defiance and uncertainty. Adam exhaled and tilted his head minutely towards the brush of Ronan’s nose against his hair. 

“ _Nice_ ,” both Henry and Blue said in sick unison.

“Oh, please,” Gansey drew out, but Adam got the feeling he’d been watching even though when he looked up Gansey’s stare was on the tarot cards. “So, what are we looking for?” He sounded dodgy, which became even more evident when he raised his head again to look at Adam only to end up derailing his gaze away from his eyes towards the floor and coming to a stop on Ronan’s forehead. 

“A way in, as usual. But I’m sort of...asking a weak ley line to strengthen itself when before this it was, like, _done_ ,” Adam said, admitting his conundrum. He was still trying to wrap his head around how kid-Ronan could have gone about creating Cabeswater without knowing the first thing about the mess he was making. Instead, of course, teen-Ronan, with all his wisdom, was left without explanation. He had shared these thoughts with Ronan several times, enough that he could feel agitation in Ronan’s sigh against his collar. “Am I in the right spot? The one where you brought back the feathers, Lynch?” he asked, trying to interrupt Ronan’s train of thought.

“Yeah,” Ronan confirmed, taking the hint that they were about to get down to business and it was time to pay attention. 

Something tugged between Adam’s ribs. “Wait, no, stay there,” he said all in a rush, inadvertently making everyone around him go utterly still. He felt himself blush, even though the way Ronan plastered himself back before Adam’s skin even had the chance to cool down again was nice.

Henry was smiling like a cat in cream and Adam sighed deeply, knowing that he was about to make things worse for himself, but better for his perceptions. “Blue, Gansey...could you...I don’t know, I need my hands for the cards, but...lean against me?” He wanted to cringe at himself for such a blatant request for _contact_ , as if he was asking for affection even though it wasn’t exactly like that. He _wasn’t_ being a _pathetic little whiny pissbaby_. His thoughts twisted darkly in his head, tensing his every muscle and prompting him to go still and shut his eyes. 

Blue and Gansey complied almost immediately, flopping down on one shoulder each like it was where they belonged. Ronan adjusted his grip around Adam’s waist and ran his hand along Adam’s stomach. The tension uncoiled within seconds, and Adam even mustered a smile at the sound of a camera shutter.

“Cheng, could you not,” he murmured, opening his eyes to find Henry happily stowing away his smartphone as though he were an experienced paparazzi.

“Parrish, man, you need to record this shit for Richardy Dick’s journal. I don’t make the rules,” Henry said solemnly, nodding at his own words.

Adam shook his head as Ronan’s string of curses rumbled against his skin. “Just keep an eye on us.”

He reached forward to gather the cards again. The pressure behind his eyes let go of him and the tingling in the tips of his fingers steadied. Blue, Gansey and Ronan pinned him to the floor, to himself and to his perception simultaneously. It was weird, it was inexplicable, and it was _better_.

With Blue laced on his arm, everything felt encompassed, five breaths into one into five. He shouldn’t have been able to hear them flowing from his healthy ear to the functioning one, but he was. As he chose cards rapidly, almost involuntarily, Adam felt himself fading, hanging by the thread of one question, reduced to his most fundamental terms: _how do we get it back?_

Adam became half-aware that his vision had blurred only once he set the remains of the deck back in his lap. He was closer to scrying than he had been in more than a month. His head was lolled to the side, resting on Gansey’s head, Ronan’s body to support him fully from the back and Blue held stubbornly close with a possessive bent of his arm. Distantly, he wondered why he’d never tried to scry like this before. It was so much _easier_ , so much safer.

He looked down at the new spread, just as Henry cleared his throat to break the silence. “Okay, that was...kinda creepy. In an interesting way, don’t get me wrong, but creepy.” He looked pensive and earnest and not as spooked as he claimed. 

Blue quietly slid away from Adam’s side to rebalance the cardboard Henrietta, prompting everyone to straighten up a bit. “So, what’s the verdict? Conclusive?” There was hope in her voice already.

No one said what they were probably all thinking: after the demonic unmaking they’d all witnessed, little was creepy anymore. 

Adam cradled his own fingers for a second, giving another, more pointed look to the cards, still high from the _grasp_ and _knowledge_ he’d felt the minute before. “I think so, yeah.”

Ringing silence followed Adam’s statement while everyone ― from Ronan still behind him to Henry evidently wondering if there was any method to the tarot madness ― waited for him to articulate his answer.

“There’s a ritual, one that I can perform,” Adam started, hovering his fingers on the Hermit and the Magician laying on top of each other. “You all need to be there with me for it to work.” He looked up at them, feeling almost shy. But he’d decided that this was the only possible interpretation of the Strength and the Tower cards flanking the pile. “It’s been performed before and it’ll push us forward...if I do it right, I guess.” The Wheel of Fortune stared up at him as the link that chained the rest of the cards together. He stopped with two fingers tapping on the floor between the last cards.

Faint clattering gave Adam an excuse to look up, only to find Gansey several feet away, one foot on the seat of his desk chair and his infamous journal open precariously on his leg.

“Gansey, oh my God,” Blue murmured, who looked conflicted between rolling her eyes and bursting into laughter.

“What, Jane?” Gansey replied, distractedly. “That’s brilliant, Adam, as usual. There are several ritual accounts ― apart from the death ones, I mean, luckily ― in my books. Some specificity?”

“Oh my God,” Henry echoed, looking at the rest of them between marvel and perplexity. “This is even more _Richardy_ than he is at school.”

“Welcome to _The Gansey Show_ , Cheng. Sit tight and relax,” Ronan replied, his cheek tensing in a lopsided smile against Adam’s sweater.

It was familiar material, of course, but the looming cards made it difficult for Adam to join Blue in her chuckling. “I’ve got something more but it’s a bit...I don’t know, fiddly, it’s more instinct than real interpretation,” he admitted, walking his index and middle fingers on the floor between the two cards.

“No one is going to grade you on this shit, Parrish, you overachieved the hell out of it already. A+ with commentation, don’t sweat it and spit it out.” Everyone in the room knew him well enough to tell that Ronan’s mockery was encouragement in disguise..

“That would be _commendation_ , Lynch, as usual we can trust you to slip archaic latinisms into everyday sentences,” Gansey piped up, still taking notes on his journal.

“Since when is _commendation_ everyday,” Blue said, shaking her head.

The unsteady anxiety that had gripped Adam dissipated into laughter.

 _We’ll be alright_ , he thought, trying to stay positive. _Even if this fails and I don’t make it, maybe, we’ll be alright._

“Okay, okay, I’ve got this,” Adam said as leaned his head back onto Ronan, in the same silent _thank you_ he tried to convey with a smile to Blue and Gansey. Henry winked at him in the process, good natured and slowly falling in their dynamic. “The ritual is...based on restrictions...like, physical ones. Balance and boundaries.” He tore his eyes away from the Hanged Man crossed with Temperance to look at Gansey, uncertain of how much sense he was making only to find him nodding. “The boundaries are the way we get answers from stuff that won’t…be real. Mysterious stuff.”

“Maybe the ley lines themselves?” Gansey suggested, scholar-investigator voice in full gear now.

“Yeah, probably,” Adam replied, reassured, sliding away from the High Priestess and onwards. He hesitated again.

“Anything else?” Blue asked, in the considerate way of someone used to the ups and down of a reading, when Adam’s pause stretched for too long.

“I…” the Fool stared at Adam, weirdly horizontal whereas all the other cards lay straight in front of him. Beginner’s success and stubborn mistakes, equally probable in their capriciousness. _This is not for me_ , Adam thought. But he was the one providing the reading that had lead to the Fool ― not reversed, not upright. Persephone’s soft warnings rang in his head. “I think so, I think we could have the right path if we finish the ritual,” he concluded.

“Parrish, man, that’s damn impressive!” Henry pierced through the fog of his doubts, cheerful as ever. “Can you really see all of that with just a handful of cards?”

Adam regarded him with an eyebrow neatly lifted, committing the cards and their arrangement to memory one last time before running a hand over them to return them to the deck.

He didn’t need to say anything, since Ronan promptly piped up with, “Yeah, no Cheng, he’s just making this shit up, you didn’t figure?” He sounded less biting than usual and his movements as he finally got up from behind Adam were earnest and charged. “What do you think, Gansey? Are we back to work like the good old days?” 

“Since when were you actually _working_ on Glendower stuff, Ronan? And driving around doesn’t count,” Blue retorted.

“Are you kidding me, Maggot? Driving around is _necessary_ , you’ve seen the Pig one too many times,” Ronan countered, offering his hand to Adam to pull him up from the floor, blue eyes shining and expression open. “And I also dreamed a ton of shit up, which we apparently need for everything so we’d better get it back.”

Getting up with a dull ache in his joints from sitting still and twisted for way too long, Adam was struck by the realization that Ronan was happy. Adam had found him a way, fished hope from unknown waters, and made him _happy_.

“I reckon it’s enough material to start with, yes,” Gansey confirmed, ignoring Ronan and Blue’s bickering. “I’m glad you’re on board for helping out with the research, Lynch, because we’re going to need tons of dusty old books. We might even have to call Malory again.”

Ronan clicked his tongue, spiky and defiant even while half-smiling and still holding two fingers of Adam’s hand. “I’ll leave you to that, Dick, but yeah, I’m fucking here for the damn books.”

“Will it start raining blood in five minutes?” Henry asked with exaggerated marvel, “Ronan Lynch, who’s _Lynching_ all of Aglionby, _here for the books_.”

Something stiffened in Ronan’s posture, like a wire tightened too far. “I said what I fucking said, Cheng,” he half-growled, letting go of Adam’s hand to stride nervously across the room, in a tight slalom to get out of the cardboard Henrietta without any damage.

“Ronan…” Gansey tried to interject.

Ronan interrupted him by turning around like the motion was a threat. “I’m not joking about the ritual shit,” he reiterated, staring Gansey in the eyes, chin rising minutely, “but I guess this is a good time to tell you that Child, fucking Aglionby and whoever else can go fuck themselves. I’m dropping out.”

Silence expanded throughout the open space, thick and dense and becoming more sinister by the second.

Everyone’s heads slowly turned towards Gansey, who was somehow universally recognised as the final authority over Ronan’s education. He batted his eyes in surprise for a second, like the blow he just received was unexpected. Then something empty and bland ― full _Richard Campbell Gansey III_ ― dawned on his handsome face. When he spoke, his voice was just as stony and passionless. “Then it would also be a good time to tell you that before we start researching we need to pack our stuff up. Headmaster Child will be taking possession of Monmouth in the new year, as a favor for not expelling you.”

Two seconds ticked by, all too fast and too slow.

The room exploded.

  
  


* * *

  
  


“What gives you the fucking right?” 

“Monmouth is mine, that’s what! I can do what I want with it.”

“And I can’t do what I want with _myself_? Fuck you!” 

Adam stood with Blue and Henry at the sideline of the shouting match between Gansey and Ronan, the three of them sharing stunned silence and knowing that there was no interrupting. Not just now, not just yet.

“Please, that’s hardly the same.”

“Oh really? I want to quit Aglionby and you just decided that I can’t! That’s very much the fucking same!”

“Ronan, Jesus. You’re _six months away_ from graduation!”

“I don’t need it! I don’t want it! What the fuck, Gansey!”

Blue tugged nervously at Adam’s sleeve, catching his attention and his eyes for a second of silent communication. Adam just shook his head minutely and grabbed the side of her hand, feeling her tension, and his tension, and Ronan and Gansey’s tension permeating the air. He detached from it as carefully as possible, isolating every word and every tone outside of himself.

“It’s _high school_. It’s just. Six. Months. Away.” 

“Still. Don’t. Need. It. I fucking hate that place.”

“You never used to! For God’s sake, you never used to.”

It was a low blow, and they could all see it in the stiffening of Ronan’s shoulders, every ounce more threatening the more hurt he was. This was the Ronan they had known, but Gansey was hanging onto something else, deeply related to the way Gansey and Ronan had known each other before everything, before everyone else had come.

“It was fucking different. Back then I was done with it at the end of the day, I had the Barns to go back to. It wasn’t an...order.”

“Ronan, you have the Barns to go back to again. The will is basically yours to manipulate. What is so disgusting about getting a _damn_ high school degree?!”

They could all see the avalanche of uncontainable, inexpressible feelings rattling through Ronan’s body, a foreign creature possessing him and a native species trying to escape confinement at the same time. For one terrible second Adam was completely sure that he was either going to destroy himself or destroy them all. Next to him, Blue silently winced at Gansey’s obliviousness coming out at the worst point in an already tense dialogue.

The crack ran deep enough for all of them to see, but just how deep became evident only when Ronan reached forward and grabbed Gansey by the collar of his shirt, violently.  
This was the closest to blasphemy any of them have ever seen Ronan go. This was _inadmissible_.

“I...have the Barns…” Ronan’s growl stuttered and choked, betraying him, and when he spoke again his voice was sick with hopeless grief, “...I have the Barns?! How _dare_ you! They’re still gone, they’re all gone! The Barns alone won’t fix it! And a degree won’t fix it! _You_ can’t fix it!”

There was no physical blow to suffer, but Gansey look struck nonetheless. It wasn’t just the _you were almost gone as well_ hanging in the passion of Ronan’s words.  
Ronan’s mourning and rage lived in gestures and silence, and having to speak it out loud was shattering him and backfiring.

A vague choked sound from Gansey’s throat suggested that he was trying to form a reply, but Ronan, though he was breathing like something was drowning him in his own lungs, didn’t let him. 

“This was my home, too.”

As abruptly as he had grabbed him, Ronan let Gansey go with enough force to make him stumble backwards. 

Adam, licking his lips and frozen to his spot, had the realization that this was the longest he’d ever heard Ronan speak about something that hurt him without cursing or starting a fist fight.

When Ronan turned around, stalking his way to his leather jacket, his expression was the most fractured and unguarded Adam had seen it since the terrifying, unspeakable moments spent next to Gansey’s lifeless body. Still, he refused to meet Adam’s eyes and Adam couldn’t ― wouldn’t ― stop him, knowing way too much about the jagged edges of Ronan’s vulnerability to step on them without regard.

Ronan said nothing more. He just made his way down the stairs like a hurricane winding up to unleash somewhere else. The door of Monmouth Manufacturing slammed behind him with enough force to make the windows upstairs tremble. 

Gansey was frozen at the end of his stumble’s trajectory, looking like the world had just tilted sideways. Adam slowly lifted his hand to run it over his face, guiltily taking advantage of the quiet moment to try and catch his breath against the crush of anxiety in the centre of his chest.

“Okay...holy shit,” Henry took it upon himself to break the silence, even as at a loss for his usual logorrhea as he was.

“No no no,” Blue interjected, charging up. Adam didn’t want to be reassured by how upset she sounded, but he kind of was. “Not okay. Very far from okay. I get that _everything_ is a wallet contest at that stupid Raven Academy of yours, Gansey, but this seems…” She trailed off. Excessive, idiotic, _masochistic_ , all were fitting conclusions for the sentence.

“What else was I supposed to do, Jane? He was going to get kicked out!” Gansey replied, still at a total loss and still scrambling to win an argument.

Blue nervously circumnavigated Gansey while they moved around the open space, orbiting around each other like an upset pair of twin stars. “I don’t know, maybe just _let him_ , Gansey?”

Gansey’s laughter was an empty rattling thing. “Yeah, sure. Because letting Ronan self-destruct is a _goddamn_ option.”

Blue huffed, nostrils flaring, as if Gansey were nearly more than she could handle. Her tone was all mockery after. “Right, because dropping out of your stupid fancy high school is gonna unleash the apocalypse! It’s the end of the world as we know it! Gansey, please!”

“It...might not be the apocalypse, but it’s structure, and I worked so hard to keep him there while he was burning everything else down. He’s so close to making it.” The reply came through a tight jaw, as if Gansey had to concentrate to match Blue’s brand of common sense.

“Gansey, man,” Henry interjected, more awkwardly than usual under the stress of the situation. “In between all the crazy shit Lynch has been up to in the last year, dropping out of school isn’t such a big deal. And it’s just out of Aglionby, it doesn’t mean he’ll never graduate.”

“Exactly!” Blue said, eager to have some support for her side. “It doesn’t need to be Aglionby, it doesn’t need to be now. And it’s Ronan, Gansey, you had to know he wouldn’t like this smarmy bargain you made.”

Gansey’s lips were pressed into a thin, displeased line. “His father really wanted him to finish off school there. Not somewhere else. There. And I know Ronan was...the way he is now...when you met him, but he can’t hate it so much, he didn’t used to.”

It was a longer iteration of the same argument from before, and still just as faulty. Blue looked right at Adam, as if it was Adam’s turn to show some support. When Adam stayed tensely silent, she sighed deeply and pushed forward. “Honestly, every clue we’ve found in the mess we’ve been through points to how Niall Lynch is not to be trusted. Like, ever. And Ronan is allowed to want something different now, we’ve all been through a lot. We’re not going anywhere if he wants to take a break...not on everything, just on school.”

Adam kept staring at Gansey. He watched him while Blue spoke, as he had watched him before, as he had spent so long watching him and striving for understanding and kinship with everything that made Gansey so alluring. He could see that some part of him was mentally conceding a point to Blue. A classic Gansey reponse would have been to sway and at least _agree to disagree_ or something equally ridiculous; this Gansey was tense and present but still completely silent. 

“This is damage control,” Adam concluded at the end, feeling his own frown all over his forehead. 

“Control? This looks far from controlled, Parrish,” Henry pointed out, uncertain. 

Adam rolled his eyes minutely ― because the feeling of dismissal, no matter how trivial, always irked him ― but looked back stubbornly at the three of them. Even without catching his meaning, now that he was finally talking, they were listening. And Gansey’s stance was more careful, like he was already catching Adam’s train of thought. 

“You knew this was going to end up in flames,” Adam said, directing his words at Gansey, “you knew you were…” He trailed off, sure of his deduction and still unable to say it.

Gansey diverted his gaze but still completed the sentence. “That I was going to die? Yes.”

Adam gritted his teeth hard enough to feel the pressure all the way up his temples. “Sure. Brilliant. So no point in hanging onto Monmouth...better burn everything to try and stabilize Ronan before you were gone.”

Adam didn’t know if understanding perfectly now was more annoying because he’d missed clues before, or because it also made him understand why Gansey had been so insistent with him. The silence in the room was once again pregnant enough that Adam had no doubt he was right.

“Jesus _Christ_ , Gansey,” Blue murmured, not really angry, because of course you could trust Richard Campbell Gansey III to be heartwarming in all he did, even in his obsession with control.

“I…” Gansey stuttered, uncharacteristically on the spot, “...I may have failed to think through this enough.”

Adam wanted to be angry. It was just _typical_ Gansey. Without his urge to manage them all, none of this would have happened. _Adam, can you fix this, give me ideas_ ― he could feel the weight of the words right between the lines of Gansey’s admission. He really wanted to be angry. 

But seeing your king bending his head under the weight of the crown to admit that defeat was coming rendered him _vulnerable_ , and he couldn’t be angry.

“Well,” Henry broke the awkward silence cheerfully, “if that isn’t a shining summary of the last few months, Gansey man!”

The tension of the moment was somehow relieved, all of them blinking blearily at Henry. It was so _true_ but so full of consequence that it was difficult to muster the will to laugh.

“Oh, come on,” Henry draped his arms around Gansey and Blue’s shoulders, snuggling himself in the middle, and wiggled his eyebrows at Adam. “Out with the long faces. Cheng Miracles and Solutions Ltd. can fix this!”

“Can you?” Blue shot back immediately.

“Don’t sound so skeptical, my lovely First Lady. Yes, I can. At least, I can fix Monmouth and push Child into reversing Ricky Third’s risky bargain,” Henry said. “Fixing Lynch ― well, one miracle at the time, it isn’t my area of expertise.”

It was easy to spot the instinctive trust in the way Gansey’s expression opened up, relief unknotting his shoulders and a half _yes_ forming on his lips. Adam did not trust so easily. He didn’t take eagerly to suggestion unless he had no other choice. “How?” he pressed, wary. 

Henry just flashed him another smile, “By offering Child something that would make a better legacy than this place ― lovely, don’t get me wrong ― but apart from making a point of getting something out of Thirdish here, it’s not much of a catch.” He rubbed Gansey’s shoulder pointedly, enjoying his hard-earned confidence. “He always wanted a standing internship opportunity for Aglionby students at my father’s place. I always refused, but I can give it to him in exchange for Monmouth.”

“You damn rich people,” Blue muttered, still pressing her cheek against Henry’s forearm in silent approval. 

“I know, right?” Henry looked overly pleased by himself, especially when Gansey solidified their grip around each other with an arm around Henry’s back.

“Thank you, Henry.” Something in the undertone of Gansey’s voice sounded almost _demure_. If he had always been this way when someone else straightened up his messes or if it was a new thing, Adam ― Magician and fixer-of-messes ― couldn’t tell.

“One point for Cheng,” Adam admitted, feeling a smile tugging at the corner of his lips in response to the relief loosening his chest. This, he could work with; this made things _solvable_. “Gansey, brainstorm some places for me.”

“Places?”

“Yeah. Henry just fixed the big hole in the situation, so I think I can win you a chance with Lynch...but I need to know where to find him,” Adam explained, internally enjoying the contribution he was providing to the sparks of hopes in Gansey’s expression. Even more so, he enjoyed the way they operated together like a well-oiled mechanism, for better and for worse.

“Oh, yes, sure...” Gansey trailed off for a second, drumming his fingers on Henry’s side, distracted from the room but sharply in focus on something else. “Do you know that offshoot of 35/7 that goes toward the river?” 

“I do. Good racing place?”

“That. Or other Kavinsky spots,” Gansey said, acknowledging the elephant in the room. “Try that one first, the old fairground next, I think. Are you sure you’re gonna be alright?”

“Positive. I’ll keep you posted,” Adam confirmed, mulling over the possibilities and crossing them with the worst-to-best case scenarios for Ronan’s mental state. 

He got closer to the three of them, getting the mandatory fist-bump from both Blue ― who looked deeply thoughtful but trusting ― and Gansey ― keenly dumbstruck as if he didn’t know for sure that he could rely on all this support.

Henry stayed still and unresponsive until Adam lifted his eyebrows at him. “Ooooh. Why, Parrish, I’m honoured,” he cooed, rushing to bump their fists together at the end.

That was something to think about, something to be said about his gestures of familiarity and friendship being considered _honourable_. 

Adam Parrish’s recognition: a prize. 

Adam could not formulate what was so meaningful about this, but it felt like a milestone after the envious, angrily yearning teen he had been just six months ago.

He waved his hand as he put his coat on, ready to make his way downstairs. He was sure that Gansey was in good, caring hands and yet somehow he didn’t feel jealous or replaced.

“Good luck taming the Lynch beast, Parrish!” Henry’s voice called after him.

“As the trees would say: _audentes fortuna iuvat_ ,” Adam said in return, stressing the long syllables. 

Laughter followed him down the stairs like well wishes.

  
  


* * *

  
  


By the time Adam had walked to St. Agnes to recover the Hondayota, the Henrietta streets were already deserted for the night. The countryside was barer yet, nothing but silence and fields fading into blackness on either side of the rundown road. 

Abandoning the well-lit 35/7 had been a gamble and every muscle in Adam’s body was tense with the cold wind through the open window. Still, he wasn’t there for fun. Looking for Ronan was an exercise in strategy; a study in his emotional patterns. Gansey’s hunch had been useful, but the general lack of humanity around meant that Ronan wouldn’t be racing here. 

An engine roared in the distance, barely audible over the clattering of the Hondayota on the uneven gravel and the whistling of the wind. Adam smiled thinly and set himself to following the sound. 

He crested a slight hill, over which the empty plane of an old dirt lot stood, ghostly in its disuse. Ronan’s BMW was nothing more than a suggestion of blaring lights and shadow in the distance, highlighting the dust in its wake as it crossed the opening in circles and violent turns. 

Adam left the window open, disregarding the goosebumps on his arms under his sweater and drew a steadying breath before shifting gear and speeding downhill. 

At first crossing Ronan’s path was easy, between the acceleration and the view from up the slope. Adam dropped in at the right time just as Ronan was speeding around the skeleton of an old cistern. Someone else might have collided directly, but Ronan’s reflexes while he was driving were always impeccable and he just braked his way through to align the cars side by side.

The moment of hesitation that followed was undoubtedly Ronan’s surprise at who had arrived in this shabby, patched up car. Adam kept his window open, like an invitation. The BMW remained closed and unbreachable, reflecting everything back. 

The sound of the engine revving again was like hearing Ronan snarling through his teeth. As suddenly as it stopped, the BMW started up again, and Adam had just two seconds to pull his car back in reverse, barely avoiding a collision.  
The maneuvering was as dangerous as Adam’s entrance had been, and somehow more violent, leaving no doubts as to the extent of Ronan’s _fight or flight_ mode.

The BMW dragged harshly as it turned, tires screeching and a thick cloud of dirt following suit. Ronan was angling towards the ramp, ready to bolt out of his hideaway.

 _If you lose him now_ , Adam’s mind echoed, _you won’t catch him again_.

Numb with adrenaline and deeply aware of how ridiculously outgunned the Hondayota was, Adam zeroed in on the only possible chance granted by his manual transmission: third gear in, engine revolutions up, clutch back on. He pressed his lips together through the angry noise of his engine ramping up, and up, and up and even held his breath before letting it go. The Hondayota propelled forward on the accelerating wave of the gear skip. Boyd would scream at him for it, but it did the job of pushing him impossibly close to Ronan.

They grazed against each other this time. Adam grit his teeth against the drag against the corner of the BMW. He didn’t have time to think about it, or think about anything except his next move.

While patience and discussion wouldn’t have stopped Ronan, this brand of craziness seemed to spur him further, rage palpable in the way the BMW tried to escape the close contact and win an opening to rush away. Adam kept the Hondayota doggedly hot on his trail, one glitch, skip and turn over another. 

With the window open, dust had coated the inside of the vehicle, sticking to his neck against a layer of sweat despite the icy air. Adam could feel his nerves in the palms of his hands, tightly grasped onto the wheel. 

“I can do this forever, Ronan,” he muttered to the BMW and to himself, revving up the engine once more.

The response of the Hondayota to his renewed fervor was a loud bang from the back of the car and a high-pitched screech from underneath. 

_There goes the engine, there go the line shafts_ , Adam’s pedantic mind supplied him.

The Hondayota had been a blissful gift from the Ganseys and an exercise in dedication for Adam to make it _his_. Under the drumbeat of his own pulse, Adam contemplated the situation as though he were watching from outside his body as the car jumped to a stop, its fumes obscuring his view even more than the cloud of dust.

He sat there for way too long without really realizing it, the adrenaline rush abruptly snapping to leave him with a mismatched pounding heart and clouds of dust and smoke to cough through. Only the driver’s door being yanked open interrupted his distant thoughts of how to contact Gansey from the middle of nowhere, the scarce probability of hitching a ride back in the middle of the night and the strange sense of loss washing through his mind.

“Get the fuck out."

Ronan's grasp on his arm left little space to protest, and after all, a chance to face Ronan had been exactly what Adam wanted.

Stumbling a little with a cough half-formed in his throat, he took in the utter fury in Ronan's expression. That was usual and expected, matching every first impression Adam had ever had of Ronan. What was less expected and still a bit disconcerting was being able to see all the signs of vulnerability layered under the aggression.

"Are you done playing goddamn Street Racer with me?" Ronan added, spurred by Adam’s silence.

"Yeah," he replied, the spinning of his agitated thoughts weirdly focused now that the puzzle that was a hurt Ronan Lynch was in his hands. "It’s not like I’d be able to keep going anyway."

Ronan ground his teeth hard enough that Adam felt it in his own mouth. "I don't want to talk," he warned.

"Then don't," Adam conceded, practical.

"Okay, why the fuck are you out here making a mess then?" Challenge and scepticism were pouring out of every vowel.

"To catch up with you. And I've got stuff to tell you whenever you feel like listening." Adam raised his eyebrows, walking the fine line between conflict and de-escalation.

"I don't care what the fuck Gansey has to say."

"His problem, not mine. Do I look like Gansey?"

Ronan was so clearly bothered that Adam knew he was getting somewhere. "I don't want to know how much _you_ think I fucked up either,” he growled.

Adam shook his head, feeling more strangely calm and contained the more Ronan tried to bite off. Because Ronan tried to bite. It was weird to feel so much more in control when his mind had been fumbling just ten minutes before.

"Stop pretending, how stupid do you think I am? I fucked up, Monmouth is gone, I crossed the damn line! So what?" Ronan growled before Adam had half a chance of responding.

"You did. It's fixable, though."

"If you think I'll fucking bend backwards like some fucking―"

"No, you do what you want to do." Adam's voice was stern enough to stop Ronan in his tracks and what he’d said was unexpected enough to keep him from continuing. "Gansey fucked up too. Lucky for the both of you, the Monmouth issue is fixed without your help."

Ronan opened and closed his mouth a couple of times, distrustful enough to remain charged for an explosion but too hopeful to detonate it just yet.

"I still don't want to talk," he muttered finally.

Adam shrugged. "Again, if you listen, I'll talk."

Everything in Ronan expression said he wanted to burn Adam, the subject, and the consequences to the ground. But he wasn’t finding fertile ground. Just a pile of _maybes_ and _what ifs_. He kicked a rock, then another, pushing his hands into the pockets of his jeans and matching the sound of his boots on the gravel with the rumbling snarl in his throat.

Finally, he turned around and stalked back to the BMW. "Fine. Come if you want, or whatever the fuck."

Adam fought back a smile. He climbed into the passenger seat of the BMW, sparing one more glance to the Hondayota, and deciding that would be an issue to deal with some other time when he had less on his mind.

Unaffected by the broken vehicle just beside it, the BMW took off with a smooth turn and instant speed. The blare of electronic music was so loud that Adam got vaguely disoriented, acutely aware in moments like this that his only working ear sometimes had trouble processing such loud sound.

True to his word, Ronan stayed silent and drove too fast uphill and through the beaten country path back to the main road. As he switched to fifth gear, though, he let his hand linger and then turned the volume down, insistently staring at the road and refusing to even acknowledge Adam's stare.

Rather than heading back to the highway, Ronan took detour after detour, driving down narrow lanes, half-wild paths and riversides like the restless creature he was. The clock of the BMW dragged them further and further into yet another night spent together in the car. The music remained, though turned down, and Adam did nothing to break the quiet, contemplating the assortment of Ronan-related memories and quirks he’d started a collection of without realizing it.

They abandoned the field in favour of a patch of forest, climbing up an uneven hill that had been a landfill several decades ago.

Adam was staring at the suggestion of Henrietta's streetlights through the driver's window, just past Ronan's profile, when Ronan murmured a word over the lyricless beat of the electronica.

"How?"

Too concise, but Adam was conscious enough of the flow of their conversation that he knew where Ronan’s thoughts were. "Henry’s gonna give Child an internship program worth remembering, and in exchange Gansey will get to keep Monmouth."

"Fucking Cheng," Ronan muttered. He was more used to having a support system that didn't come with strings attached than Adam, but still not so keen on accepting simple acts of kindness. Still, the flexing of his fingers on the wheel failed to disguise his palpable rush of relief.

Adam didn't say anything else, letting Ronan think over the concept, simmer in the silence and anticipate the list of his unasked questions.

"I'm going back to the Barns," Ronan murmured after several minutes and route changes, more tentative than before. 

Adam just hummed agreeably and made no demands to be brought back to St. Agnes.

The night had produced plenty of worries and issues to deal with tomorrow ― in retrospect it would have gone more smoothly if he hadn't lost control like he had ― but for the moment Adam let himself enjoy the satisfaction of a well-executed plan.

  
  


* * *

  
  


They didn’t really speak again at the Barns even though Ronan looked conflicted when Adam went to sleep in the guest room beside Matthew's bedroom. Having dealt with his earlier anger, Adam just bid him goodnight and didn’t try to make him reveal his thoughts.

He settled himself in the nest of sheets and mattress and tried to preserve the heat from the shower on his skin, not dusted and sweaty anymore. Even though it was in the small hours of the morning, he lay half-awake, his stubborn mind flying through all the tactics to use to complete the plan from the foundation he had built tonight.

When Ronan came through the door and slid into bed next to him, his train of thought halted in a sputter of surprise. He either needed to give himself more credit or he had misread the proportion of Ronan's temper.

Lying beside him with several tormenting inches of distance between their bodies, Ronan didn't say _I want to talk now_ but it was crystal clear nonetheless.

True to his stubborn word, Adam didn’t put Ronan out of his misery by opening the dance. He still turned on his side to face him, though, clearing every doubt about his being awake.

In the grey darkness of the guest room, Ronan's gaze carried a palpable weight every time he mustered the courage to properly fix it on Adam rather than piercing holes into the pillowcase.

"Even if he's furious with me, I’m not just gonna bend," Ronan said finally, his deep voice rasping in his throat.

Gansey, of course. "He's not."

"I know you hate it," Ronan went on like Adam hadn't even replied at all, the skeptical scowl in his voice the only evidence that he had heard him.

"Hate what? Because I'm not really sure I do," Adam said quietly.

Ronan folded into himself, fingers flexing restlessly and teeth on his leather bands. He didn't talk for a long time and when he did it was muffled around a bite. "That my problems are other people’s problems. They fucking solve them for me and I let them."

Adam sighed, "Gansey is a control freak against his own better judgment. He almost died for good like five times while we chased after him."

"You know what I fucking mean!"

"Jesus, Ronan," he countered before the snapping could escalate further. "Do I think he should run to prevent every self-destructive explosion you set? No. Do I get why he does it? Sure. I was out there looking for you too, when you really needed us."

Ronan made an half-strangled sound, forever contrary when put on the spot.

"He shouldn't have done that. But you have to talk to him about it," Adam added, knowing he couldn’t tolerate being a messenger pigeon between the two of them.

"I hate Aglionby. I just want to get the fuck out of there, even if Gansey wants me with a damn diploma." The gritted sentence drew closer to the core of Ronan's torment. "I know you hate it. I know."

Adam slid a hand over his own face, unruly feelings building and being rationalized and prioritized immediately. "I do things on my terms, that you should know. Even when I'm jealous, even when I'm greedy, I stick to my own terms." He spoke into the darkness, seeing himself reflected and dissected against an unforgiving mirror. "What makes you think I'd want to choose someone’s life for them?"

Ronan chewed on his leather bands instead of replying, more slowly now that he could feel the truth of Adam's words even while refusing to believe them completely. "You wouldn't do it. Even if you were me, you wouldn't."

"Dropping out?" Adam considered the question in light of their crazy quest, of the unanswered questions. Even in light of his own tarot reading. "No, you're right, I wouldn't. But not for the reason you’re thinking of."

"Oh really? And what would that be?" The challenge in Ronan's voice escalated quickly enough to fill the darkness of the room with tension. He interrupted Adam's attempt to start a reply. "Because I'm _so bright_ and I'm just _not putting in effort_? Because I should get something matching my money? Because a diploma and a college will make me a functioning fucking member of society?"

Adam rolled his eyes and interrupted Ronan as soon as he stopped to catch his breath. "Because you don't know why your father put you in Aglionby in the first place, and insisted that you finished there."

Ronan tensed beside him, the mention of Niall sliding him from one uncomfortable spot to another. He didn't seem to have a reply.

"I wouldn't drop out because of that. Because your dad had a lot of messy secrets and we're far from knowing them all. Maybe this track leads somewhere." Adam said.

Turned towards him, Ronan was staring right at Adam, eyes wide in the dim light. Adam let the concept sink in, following the progression through the press of Ronan's cheek against the pillow and the fiddling of his hands.

"And if I can't do it?" Ronan murmured, voice rough and self conscious.

Adam let himself mull over the concept, lacking an appropriate immediate comeback that would work for Ronan. He didn't do _can'ts_ , and they both knew it. Adam never granted himself that sort of luxury, living on one _you do this or your life is ruined_ after another. Ronan's situation was different though ― different needs, different desperation, different options.

"I think you _could_ , because you’re bright and you’ve had bigger challenges and worse odds," Adam started, at the end ― because he believed that and believed Ronan needed to hear it ― but he pushed further immediately, "But if you _can't_ , you don't have to. We'll find a way around it that works for everyone and gets us the answers."

Ronan's breath stuttered minutely, in time with an unconscious shudder running from his shoulders to his legs. It was the type of sensation Adam needed to let him stew in, so he shut up for a minute or two.

When Ronan spoke again, it was totally out of context. "You fried the shitbox."

Adam smiled, feeling bittersweet about it. "I did."

Ronan squirmed again. "I’ll help you bring it to Boyd's or whatever the fuck."

Spoken in a soft tone, it was as close to a _sorry_ as Ronan Lynch could get after an explosion. Tilting his head sideways, Adam hummed in appreciation of the sentiment, though he didn’t feasibly see the Hondayota being fixed.

"That was...fucking impressive, to be honest," Ronan added sheepishly. "I didn't think you could drive that way."

He wasn’t sure if it was an attempt to lighten the mood, but Adam snickered nonetheless. "I know cars well enough to drag you, Lynch. Just don't make me do it too often. I need the element of surprise."

"Watch therefore, for you know neither the day nor the hour," Ronan said, in what Adam was half sure was a biblical reference. It sounded rather apocalyptic, but he didn’t bother asking for clarification, since Ronan had started talking again. "I'll think about it. And talk to that shithead," he added, curling more around the pillow to avoid looking at Adam. The _non sequitur_ making perfect sense coming from him.

Adam hid the smile of a hard-earned half victory around an exaggerated yawn. "Good," he just said, sinking down as well and closing his eyes. 

Adam made a point of leaving his hand between them, open and facing the ceiling. Ronan stilled for a few long seconds, before rushing to grab it fiercely, almost possessive in the way he pressed down with his thumb on the centre of Adam's palm and circled his fingers.

They didn't get closer, but Adam fell asleep with a feeling of warmth radiating all the way through him.

  
  


* * *

  
  


The following day, it rained so badly that Boyd had to close his flooding garage and notify Adam with a brusquely concise call to the trailer factory.

Not for the first time, Adam thought about the Hondayota, forcibly abandoned in the middle of nowhere with an engine that would surely be cold by now. A voice in his head ― remarkably similar to his mother's, disinterested in her criticisms but always, always, ready to offer them ― noted that apparently that was the way he wanted to treat his things now, just abandon them once they got too rickety for him.

He inhaled deeply, forcing the pressure off his sternum from the inside, and started walking faster to catch up with Dylan (28, one daughter and one toddler, respectful of Adam's dedication to work even though he didn't get the purpose of his fancy school stuff when he had a perfectly functioning pair of factory hands) to beg off a lift back into town.

"Whassup, kiddo? Your little can's out for the day?" Dylan drawled goodnaturedly through his mismatched jaw ― apparently from an accident at the factory before they’d updated the machinery.

"Yeah, engine's busted and..." 

Under the thick curtain of pouring water, reflecting the dim lights outside the main exit of the factory, the sleek lines of the BMW that had suddenly appeared were almost black.

"...apparently today’s backup plan is here. But thanks, as usual, and say hi to the wife and the little ones," Adam said, flying through the automatic pleasantries expected from him.

"Sure. Night, Adam." Dylan’s head swiveled to follow his path as he rushed to the BMW with a mulling stare that Adam felt nice and sharp on the back of his neck and chose to ignore.

The passenger door of the BMW was already open. Adam brought way too much water in with him from the thirty second walk to the car for his tastes. Ronan ― used to much worse soiling his car interior ― didn’t bat an eye and started the car before the door was even closed. His features were reflective as a sharpened knife edge, burdened with all the thoughts he had yet to properly express. He didn’t meet Adam’s eyes.

Chainsaw cawed and flapped around from the back, finding her resting place on the headset of Adam’s seat and picking delicately at his hair. She had been there with them in the morning, as well, and this only heightened Adam’s suspicions that Ronan’s day had been spent partaking in the same type of reckless driving going on now. 

Neither of them spoke for a long time, even though the music was less deafening than it had been the night before. Adam contented himself with the relief of sitting down in a warm dry place after a straining shift, lightly stroked Chainsaw’s feathers, and pretended he didn’t want to hear something ― anything ― from Ronan.

“You want to be dropped off somewhere, tell me now. I’m going to Monmouth.” Ronan clipped out from his own clenched jaw, tone brash to drown out the anxiety he was probably feeling.

“No garage tonight, so Monmouth is fine. Unless you don’t want me there.”

“I fucking asked, didn’t I?” Ronan tried to glare but all Adam could see in his expression was anguish. “But I want to talk to Gansey alone.”

“Fair enough,” Adam said easily, tilting his head to the side to keep Ronan in his field of vision. “Do you want the other options?”

“Fuck the other options!” Ronan snapped, the BMW speeding up further along the motorway. “We keep your damn ideas for when we really need them. I want to figure it out, okay?”

Adam’s fingers slid absently over Chainsaw’s beak, too distracted to play mock-pecking with her. He wasn’t really used to this Ronan, to watching him struggle with his own destructive tendencies. He was no stranger, though, to battling to overcome your limits and darker instincts. 

“This time we do it better,” he murmured softly, echoing Ronan’s recent words.

“Exactly,” Ronan said.

The BMW lurched as they turned down the shortcut that would take them back to Henrietta.

  
  


* * *

  
  


Monmouth was silent and deserted when they rushed in. Adam mechanically kicked off his muddy workboots while Ronan sat broodingly at the foot of the stairs.

“I’ll be upstairs.”

“Mhn.”

The empty warehouse rattled and sloshed, acting as an echo chamber for the storm outside. And yet as he wandered uncertainly among the artifacts of Gansey’s existence Adam still managed to hear the Camaro approaching. 

When the door opened, nothing changed for a moment until Blue made her own appearance upstairs. She and Adam regarded each other with the same thin lipped expressions. Together, they moved to lean heavily against the dusty glass that sided the stairs, keeping a peripheral vision of Ronan and Gansey’s figures downstairs. 

They wouldn’t have eavesdropped even if the rain had let them, but they still observed silently ― as the two of them circled each other, for several minutes of inaudible conversation, as they tensed at the same times, as Ronan grasped handful of Gansey’s jacket with enough force to half-lift him off his feet.

“What _fucking_ good does it do?!”

No audible reply to Ronan’s raised voice filtered from downstairs.

“...don’t _do_ this to me...no!...Fucking _Aglionby_ wouldn’t have fixed _anything_!”

Fractured bits of Ronan’s voice filtered upstairs again and Blue squeezed Adam’s hand silently, helping to distract him from the convoluted twists his heart was doing in his chest.

Gansey never shouted. He didn’t this time either, but something must have shifted in their exchange because Ronan released him and ran his hands over his buzzed skull. 

There was something apologetic in the way Gansey got slowly closer again, moving Ronan’s hands gently away to drag him in the openness of his arms. Ronan tensed and then yielded, bending down on Gansey’s shoulder and grasping at him in a completely different way. 

Whatever Gansey was telling him, with one cheek pressed to the crown of Ronan’s head, belonged to no one but them and the insistent beating of the rain.

Not for the first time but just as cluelessly, Adam pondered love.

  
  


* * *

  
  


Considering how much all of them had relied on Adam’s reading ― reassured by all the details that _ought_ to mean they were close to a solution ― the next few weeks spent beating uselessly around the bush were frustrating to say the least.

They had fished out every book, contacted Malory again, visited other trusted psychics almost all the way to D.C., and still nothing even remotely fit ― not the limited description they had of the ritual or their knowledge of its purpose. So they dragged Maura, Jimi and Calla into helping, compromising by sparing them all of the details of their plan. Still they got nowhere.

Adam’s life was a whirlwind of pointless research, work, more work, college applications, redundant tarot readings, watching Ronan struggle through the halls of Aglionby, trying to sound original in personal essays, work, homework. He’d thought he had it together, that _better_ was now finally within reach. Instead, he often found himself putting in a conscious effort to keep his jaw unclenched. All the while, the days got shorter and colder. The only hope that magic was still real and not a collective hallucination they’d shared was in the flicker of dreams and in the little trinkets Ronan still brought back from time to time. Even so, Adam could see that Henry ― with his eternal optimism and easy smile ― was starting to scrape the bottom of the barrel, so they were definitely in trouble. 

Unbelievably, at the end the key came from none of the people they sought out.

Adam was chopping vegetables in the kitchen of 300 Fox Way, where Maura was trying to orchestrate a meal that fit everyone’s dietary requirements. Blue sat on the counter just beside the cutting board. She was eating yogurt, dressed in a long sweater and improbably painted leggings, and complaining about one of her more insufferable classmates. Putting himself to work preparing food helped Adam worry less about how much money his share of the dinner would cost the psychics when they inevitably made him stay and eat with them. 

Gwenllian’s appearance in the kitchen was cacophonous and incongruent with the mood, just as everything she did tended to be. She bumped into every piece of furniture and clattered plates on her way in before stopping in front of Blue with wide eyes and a manic smile. 

“What now?” Blue snapped immediately, always on edge with her. 

Gwenllian only waved the creased piece of paper she held in Blue’s face. “Didn’t you want a ritual, Blue Lily?”

The entire kitchen froze. Gwenllian just laughed in her unbridled way, getting even louder when Blue rushed to snatch the paper out of her hand like she was afraid it would disappear. 

Adam craned his neck to ogle what looked like a list of directions and details, writing furious and smeared with suspicious dirty spots.

“This doesn’t look like English…” he said tentatively, after skipping over several sentences without grasping a single word. 

“Not my problem,” Gwenllian sang at him, twirling around with her cloud of flyaway hair. “You wanted it, you have it. We did it once, you know? In Waleswaleswaleeees, when Father dearest wanted your daddy dearest to point the way, Lily Blue.”

Blue was stony beside him, and at this point even Maura had rushed to look at the paper. Gwenllian was nothing if not delighted by the impact she was causing, singing her way through the kitchen in something that, again, didn’t sound like English.

“So you...want to help us with that?” Adam asked, suspicious and ever uncertain around so much unpredictability. 

She stopped to stare at him, intense and serious, as if he had gone crazy. “That’s my help over there, Magician. Make it count.” The tilt of her chin was more regal than she usually bothered to be. She looked at Blue again, and the manic smile returned, “Your Magician is no tree and you’re only half a tree...don’t splinter, Lily Lily _Lily_ Blue.”

Gwenllian left the room ― after she knocked down a chair and stole a teaspoon to twist into her cluttered hair ― and left them with the outline of the impossible ritual they’d been chasing for weeks.

“I think it’s in Welsh,” Maura murmured.

  
  


* * *

  
  


As it turned out, it was indeed Welsh, the medieval highborn kind both Gansey and Malory happened to be obsessive experts on.

The ritual was, even by Malory’s standards, convoluted. _“Considering it doesn’t even involve blood or death, you see? You get what I mean, right?”_ It was also, by the psychics’ accounts, dangerous and easy to screw up. Plus, there was no way to predict exactly how it could backfire ― _“Every ritual can backfire, Blue. If they can’t, they don’t really work to begin with_.”

Unsurprisingly, the debate between the five of them on whether to proceed or desist wasn’t much of a debate. They sat in a circle on the floor of Monmouth and passed the translated, neatly written version of the ritual around for the hundredth time over, completely silent.

“It has to be done on the winter solstice,” Henry said at the end, restating the obvious.

“Yes. And that’s less than two weeks from now,” Blue echoed.

They all sighed and Adam could feel their eyes on him. He kept skipping through the lines he could by now recite by heart, and nodded minutely without looking up.

Gansey pursed his lips. “So I’d say we better get down to business.”

  
  


* * *

  
  


The only thing Adam was aware of when he woke up with the second beep of the alarm clock was that December 21st was three days away. That, and how much harder it was to wake up when darkness seemed like a constant state. 

He slid discreetly out from under the duvet, making sure not to uncover Ronan in the process. His mind ticked mechanically through his overly-efficient morning routine even though there was no morning shift waiting for him. 

At least ― he considered at some point between brushing his teeth and stripping off his pyjamas ― the Barns were a welcome relief from the constant chill of St. Agnes or even Monmouth Manufacturing’s lousy heating. The water of the shower was immediately and indefinitely hot, but even enjoying these dream luxuries was hard when all Adam could see when he closed his eyes were the plans for the ritual as though they were etched onto his eyelids. 

He turned to face the showerhead so the water would fall down onto his lowered head. With the water pouring over him he was so immersed in slowly working through the unending list of set details that he didn’t notice another presence in the bathroom until the door of the shower opened. 

“Jesus _Christ_.” He flinched instinctively but still didn’t turn around even as Ronan entered the shower behind him.

“In my defense, I knocked _and_ yelled, but apparently you woke up just to sleep in the fucking shower,” Ronan told him, his deep voice echoing against the tiles. It opened the space, while before Adam’s chest had been claustrophobically collapsing in on itself. 

“Whatever. It’s the water. I wasn’t sleeping,” he murmured, eyes fixed on the rack of shower supplies, pretending he couldn’t feel Ronan’s vicinity in the way the skin on his neck tingled.

“It’s fuck o’clock in the morning, it’d make sense. I thought you didn’t have work.” Ronan’s voice got even closer, their sides brushing together while he helped himself to the jet of water. 

“You’re awake too. And I don’t,” Adam admitted, fiddling with a bottle of body wash. “I just need to check stuff for the ritual.”

“I’m awake ‘cause you’re awake,” Ronan snatched the bottle from his hands in a smooth gesture, earning himself a sideways glare from Adam. “You checked yesterday. Three times.”

“But I wanted to try another reading.”

“Did that one during the night. I woke up because you were shuffling.”

Adam cringed even though there was a smile in Ronan’s voice, and failed to come up with a proper comeback. It was difficult to explain the urge he had to do something _more_ , something that wasn’t just waiting for the others to finish their part, for supplies to arrive; something more convincing than telling himself he’d double checked everything and there was nothing more to be done. 

He jumped softly under the slide of Ronan’s hand along his back, realizing late that he had been silent for too long.

“Parrish.”

“Mhn.”

He obediently raised his arms in turn to let Ronan soap him up, something adjusting under his skin in the wake of the touch. 

“Parrish.”

“...What?”

He stilled under the sudden solid grasp on his shoulders, where Ronan’s thumbs slid along the muscles, making them yield in surprise. The next breath in his lungs was shallow, and less strained.

“Adam.”

“What?!”

He didn’t wait for a reply, the tension in his voice evidently the result of uneasiness rather than proper anger. He turned under Ronan’s hands to face him, finally, under the insistent hot stream of the shower.

Ronan looked back at him with a crooked smile, as if there was nothing more rewarding than having Adam finally facing him. The hint of tiredness in the chiselled lines of his face betrayed his interrupted sleep, but there was no irritation in his blue eyes, darker than usual in the lighting of the bathroom. He was completely, gloriously naked, water running down his body. It shouldn’t have been surprising but it struck Adam nonetheless.

“What?” Ronan echoed him, humor edging into his tone.

Adam just snorted and dragged him closer by the back of his neck to kiss him, open and shameless. Ronan bent down to meet him, eager and slippery wet.

Of course tilting his head to kiss him more deeply only resulted in an unwelcome stream of warm water into their mouths. Adam sputtered and Ronan laughed, peculiarly agreeable now that Adam’s attention was actually on him. 

“I should turn off the water,” Adam admitted. Staring at Ronan’s lips was the only thing anchoring his skin to his body, or at least that was how it felt.

“Or maybe you should shower properly, since you’re here,” Ronan mocked, reaching behind him and kissing Adam’s cheek.

Adam was perfectly ready to give the kissing another try when Ronan’s right hand rubbed over the top of his head, lifting his hair up and combing through it with a growing amount of foam, barely out of the shower jet. He was washing Adam’s hair for him, and it was strangely endearing. It felt as foreign to Adam as every other gentle act Ronan dragged him into ― always disregarding how little they suited him, how he didn’t know what to do with them. 

He tilted his head, following the slow rubbing. For once in his life, he felt like he had plenty of time to enjoy this. When he closed his eyes this time his mind’s only focus was the pressure of Ronan’s fingertips on the sensitive skin of his scalp. 

“You look like a fucking founding father. You know, white wig and all,” Ronan snickered, moving to put away the bottle.

Smiling between one breath and the other, Adam snatched it away for himself. “Just ‘cause you don’t know much to use.”

Under normal circumstances Adam knew exactly how little product he could get away with using without affecting his hygiene. But Ronan’s skin looked all _supple_ under the water and his cheeks were pink from the steam, so he just _squeezed_ in response, getting a handful of gel and a raised eyebrow from Ronan.

“Just shut up, you’re dirty enough,” Adam said in anticipation of whatever Ronan was about to say, and reached to smear everything around and put it to good ― if excessive ― use. 

“Oh, am I, now?” Ronan drawled, bringing his hands back to Adam as well.

They pushed against each other softly, in and out of the stream with an impractical amount of foam forming on their bodies and at their feet. Adam only felt like laughing. Laughing and touching more, mostly. They bumped together again, and even though Adam was conscientiously refraining from looking down he could feel Ronan’s hardness on his hip. 

“You’re horny,” Adam accused, twisting his head under the water.

Ronan smiled along the edge of a knife, but still washed the last of the shampoo out of Adam’s hair in a deep caress. “And you aren’t?”

If Ronan was pressed on his hip, Adam leaned against his leg, and there was no denying it.

“I am now.”

He rushed to push Ronan out of the water stream and leaned up to kiss him again, demanding. Ronan slipped a little on the ceramic and their teeth clattered together when his back hit the tiles, saving them from potential disaster. 

“ _Shit_ , fuck,” he cursed in Adam’s mouth, just before licking into it, unsurprisingly not really deterred by the safety hazard going on. 

“Careful,” Adam pointed out, only to get the concern more deeply kissed out of him, the wet, demanding grasp of Ronan’s hands on his hips like firecrackers along his nerves. 

It wasn’t like he’d never had the chance to observe Ronan’s naked skin before. He saw him change clothes, to start with; he’d taken the same clothes off his body and let Ronan undress him as well. But it had always been in some degree of darkness, in the cramped quarters of a shared bed, or in hurried glimpses in the most random places. Now, the light of the bathroom reflected gleamingly off the tiles and Ronan had _so much skin_ showing.

It was difficult to decide if he wanted to touch or look more, so Adam resolved to try to do both at the same time. He stroked along Ronan’s sides and stole glances by tilting his head and kissing along his cheek and neck. 

Ronan was eager to be completely cooperative, rocking subtly against him in a way that made Adam’s lungs feel more full of steam that they already were. He chased after Ronan’s mouth for more kisses as he grabbed Adam to guide him closer. Trying to lock their legs together resulted in Ronan losing his balance on the slippery surface again, provoking a new string of curses. 

“You’re gonna break your neck,” Adam mumbled, as if the rush for contact wasn’t getting to his head as well.

Blindly, he smacked against the faucet to turn the shower down and found himself turning Ronan by the shoulders, guiding him to lean against the wall instead of slipping down from it before even thinking about the gesture. 

“Fuck,” Ronan muttered, but he was flushed and pressed the length of his left arm against the tiles above his head without resistance. 

Adam looked at him, his skin blushing against the white tile with the heat of the water. The sprawling blackness of his tattoo shone on his skin like an alien design. He reached to press between Ronan’s shoulder blades as if to reassure himself that the tattoo was part of him, that the ink wouldn’t wash away with the remainder of the soap around them. Adam’s throat locked and he couldn’t speak, blinking water from his eyes as he stared at the broadness of Ronan’s shoulders, at the curve of his spine blurring with the coils of the tattoo leading all the way down to his ass, to his legs, slightly spread to steady himself.

Whatever blood still oxygenated his brain was rerouted when Ronan grabbed him and dragged him closer, trying to obtain more contact than just the hand on his back which remained stubbornly still. 

“Adam, fuck, come on,” he gritted, too demanding to really sound pleading. 

Adam didn’t particularly mind whatever tone he wanted to assume, especially not when he found himself plastered against Ronan’s back with his dick pressed hard between his buttocks. 

Ronan made a strangled sound ― a little surprised, mostly something else ― and Adam couldn’t breathe, couldn’t _think_ , so he just kissed from his shoulders to the line of his neck, following whatever instinct was leading him to rock against him in jerking, rhythmic movements. 

“Okay?” he panted helplessly, mouth close to Ronan’s ear.

“Yeah, _yes_ , shit.” Ronan dragged every s as if he couldn’t open his mouth enough to let it go properly. He shifted minutely to grind back against Adam.

Once again, his whole world zeroed in on Ronan, the solidity of his body, the surprising softness of his ass. It was the best, _filthiest_ thing Adam has ever done in his life and he just wanted more.

He let his hands roam, clenching Ronan’s shoulders, scratching softly along the lines of the tattoo, running all the way down to the top of his thighs. He couldn’t stop rubbing against him, seeking friction. 

Ronan’s breathing was laboured, though Adam, in the back of fogged mind, wasn’t really sure what was so good for him about this. Still, his mouth was half open, one side of his face pressed against the wall, and Adam just _had_ to lean in and kiss his way to his lips. Ronan craned his neck to kiss him fully, opening his legs slightly more. The incredible warmth of his body was welcoming even while Adam felt like self-combusting.

“Ronan, God…” Adam rumbled, voice too tight.

He gave up and dropped his forehead down against Ronan’s shoulder, furiously kissing it between breaths that only got more clipped once he managed to get a hold on his hips with one hand and pull Ronan back against him. There was something mesmerizing about the way Ronan’s muscles flexed, strong and supple where Adam’s felt slender and half-starved in comparison. He could have flipped Adam off of him in half a second, and instead he was letting him do this, apparently even enjoying himself. 

Through the rising tightness in his stomach and the shuddering of his limbs, Adam knew he should slow down, or at least stop watching Ronan’s body while he moved against him, where he was slotted against the too-hard outline of Adam’s cock. But with the sinuous way he responded to Adam’s rocking, their bodies moving like one, he just _couldn’t_ look away.

He ran one hand up Ronan’s stomach to feel his abs jump and watch his shoulder blades twitch backwards. _Maybe he’ll always be like this with me_ , Adam’s thoughts echoed numbly through his burning want. _I’ll touch him and he’ll twist under my hands and it’ll always feel just as good_.

Ronan twitched even more when Adam repeated the movement and then bent his back as if to accompany the slide of his hand climbing upwards. Following the same, unpracticed instinct, Adam dragged the tip of his thumb over Ronan’s left nipple and Ronan stopped breathing for a second, the ripple of his tension propagating like a wave throughout him. 

Adam was struck by the sudden realization that Ronan would probably let him do even more, maybe let him have sex with him.

_He’d let me have him, thrust into him and fuck him, fuck together, fuck fuck fuckfuck._

Adam’s mind short-circuited around the idea like his brain had been fried, honoured and rewarded by the mere _possibility_ of it. Ronan’s hard breathing was magnified in his ears through the pumping of his blood and it felt like recognition, like after all the tentative fumbling and rushed touching Adam had finally mastered the intimacy between them and they were good, he was good, _it was good_.

Chasing the euphoria, he flicked his thumb over Ronan’s nipple again and then pressed down on it, rubbing. He didn’t know what he expected from it, but Ronan _moaned_ , a shudder running down his spine through the coils of dark ink, and he pressed backwards, grinding against Adam.

Adam missed his next breath, vision blurring, and came all over Ronan’s back.

So much for mastery.

He should have tried to play it off, smoothed the situation somehow, ― dug a hole to bury himself? ― but instead he just shuddered against Ronan, breathing hard against his shoulders. He only snapped out of it when Ronan himself reached for his arm, caressing upwards from the hand lodged on his hips.

“Sorry ― shit ― sorry,” Adam murmured then, lifting his head up. He wouldn’t look at his come sliding down Ronan’s skin, he just _wouldn’t_.

Somehow Ronan was smiling and all too ready to kiss him once Adam got within reach. “Shut it, Parrish, I’m fucking _flattered_.”

Adam groaned, pained, even though Ronan did sound serious. He compromised by kissing him more deeply once Ronan turned his head further backwards.

“I got you all hot and bothered,” Ronan sighed against his lips.

Shit, he could feel the heat radiating from his face. “Christ, you really did,” he admitted, hopeless. 

It must have been the right response, because Ronan twined his fingers with Adam’s hand, releasing the desperate grip, and squirmed in his arms. “Good,” he hissed, unabashedly pleased and maybe a bit hot and bothered himself, if the way he dragged Adam’s hand from his hip to his cock ― so hard, wet from the water, _wet_ on the tip ― was any indication. He hummed low in his throat in time with Adam’s first stroke. 

Maybe they were still fine, even after Adam’s overeagerness. The thrum of the blood in his veins was tinted with delight as he painstakingly sought the sensitive spot close to Ronan’s ear with his tongue. The wet smoothness of his skin needed to be appreciated, as did the broadness of his chest and the press of his ribcage against the tightness of Adam’s arms around him with every stuttering breath.

Being safely anchored in his own skin while watching Ronan unravel was like the calm after an explosion. Ronan was careless while Adam tried not to overthink, tensing and relaxing as Adam’s hand jerked him off over a slippery layer of soap; he was loud while Adam was silent, dropping his forehead against the tiles and parting his lips as if moaning in the shower was acceptable. 

“Thank God I don’t have work,” Adam murmured, sliding his lips along a tendon in Ronan’s neck, hugging him against his chest. The point where their bodies touched was scorching, his back froze in comparison. 

“It’s not like...ah...you took too long.” There was breathless mirth in Ronan’s voice, and the curve of his raised eyebrow was incongruous with the parted lips, smeared with spit from where his teeth had been worrying at them. 

“Shut up!” The reply bubbled in Adam’s chest like laughter. He leaned in to suck Ronan’s bottom lip and remembered that his come was still on Ronan’s skin. “You won’t either.”

Ronan’s eyes widened minutely and only then Adam realized that he had actually verbalized the possessive thought out loud. The only sensible response was to try and drown it in the renewed efforts of his hand on Ronan’s erection, stubbornly ignoring the burn of his own tendons. It was good, though, grabbing him from behind, giving his hand an angle it could recognize.

Ronan shuddered. When Adam widened his palm to steady him he was reminded of the hand pressing on Ronan’s chest. Instinctively, he reached for one nipple again, rolling it between index and middle finger this time. 

Ronan’s eyelids fluttered furiously, his mouth dropped open under Adam’s half-kiss, and he crumpled against the shower wall. “Fuck!...Ah...A-ah! _Christ_!” 

His words trailed off into a strangled whine and for the first time Adam got a unshielded view of the tremor that went through Ronan’s body when ― true to Adam’s warning ― he spent himself on the wall. 

Adam stilled his hand, but Ronan’s hips kept working against it mindlessly. They were breathless together. Adam drank in the details of the moment as if he would never witness something so revealing again.

Eventually, Ronan’s breathy moans devolved to heavy breathing and shaky knees, so Adam let him go, leaving just one hand on his arm. He wasn’t sure if he was trying to support him or to keep him were he was, so he resolved to turning on the shower again and gently washing the residue of soap and come off of both of them. Adam felt hazy, Ronan’s voice still ringing in his working ear even though the only sound in the shower was the water and their soft breaths.

Ronan turned around slowly, straightening himself from whatever epiphany he had been experiencing. He smacked his hand against the tap to stop it again, reaching for Adam with the same hand. Leaning back into Ronan’s space to be kissed thoroughly was hardly a task. Ronan was still naked, so _gloriously_ naked. Floating past his anxiety, a treacherous part of Adam’s brain ― possibly located at crotch height ― suggested that maybe they could give it another go, try again just now, since he didn’t have to go to work.

Five obnoxiously loud knocks on the bathroom door startled them enough to smash their noses together.

“Adam!” Opal demanded from the other side, “If you’re done making Kerah happy, can we have breakfast?”

Adam was aware that his eyes were widening over the pit of the sudden horror, but could do nothing but stare at Ronan in dismay. Ronan slowly blinked and turned towards the door, but whatever he had meant to say was swallowed by incredulous barking laughter. He squeezed Adam’s arm, shaking his head to indicate that he couldn’t offer any other reply.

“Kerah, Adam!” Opal pressed, the clatter of her hooves on the floorboard loud enough that it meant she was probably jumping up and down.

“I just...we...we’ll be down in a second, Opal, go on!” Adam scrambled, raising his voice over the sound of Ronan laughing his _arse_ off as if they hadn’t just basically been spotted by the child of the house. 

On the other hand, she was a fruit of Ronan’s mind so the chances of being able to _scandalize_ her were remote at best. 

“Okay _Kerah_ , since you’re plenty happy get out of the damn shower,” Adam mocked, sliding out of Ronan’s arms and pushing him out of the glass box.

Ronan just howled louder, all teeth and shining eyes, beelining towards the towel rack. 

For as much as Adam thought this was a _serious_ issue, once he started snickering by reflex he couldn’t stop.

  
  


* * *

  
  


After weeks of obsessive planning, Adam hadn’t expected to feel dismayed when the only thing left to do was to wait for the right time for the ritual to start. But that was the only label he had that fit the knot in his stomach.

They could have done this in the attic, but Gwenllian had barricaded herself in it and refused to get out. That had been thirty six hours and change ago, so they had enough time to find the only other place in the house with a window that would let in the moonlight directly only between ten PM and midnight of the Longest Night. This place happened to be Persephone’s old room and Adam had felt a pang in his heart for every piece of furniture, trinket and box of yarn they had to remove to make space for the scene they needed to set.

“It was probably intended, darling,” Adam overheard Jimi tell Blue soothingly. “Persephone’s room is safe for you all, as she would have intended it to be. The attic isn’t, not after Neeve.”

If Blue’s hum was anything to go by, she wasn’t convinced.

Gansey and Ronan looked guilty in their own personal ways. Even Henry, who had never met Persephone outside of the other’s stories, had treated her things with the utmost care. 

For all their skepticism about the _predestination_ of their location, they did find all ten of the mirrors they had planned to collect from around the house already in the room. They were even hung in perfect symmetry. With the centre of the room clear of the bed and the two trunks, Calla had plenty of space to order them around to drill the hooks for her aerial yoga hammocks into the ceiling. 

If Adam had been uncomfortable already, finding himself barefoot, dressed in a mere t-shirt and sweatpants and tangled in fabric under Calla’s critical stare brought things to a new level. Still, he nodded at Calla when she looked for his confirmation to proceed, and followed her across the worn wooden floor to the corner of the room where the first length of fabric dangled from its hook. 

One firm pull. His left arm was guided backwards, fabric now tense around his wrist, his elbow and the top of his arm.

Second corner, second pull. Adam’s right arm followed suit, and then adjusted incrementally until his shoulders dropped and his arms were perfectly symmetric, spread behind his back. He stared at the floor with clenched teeth while Calla moved outside his peripheral vision. 

A rustle of fabric, a slight constriction from the top of his thigh all the way down his ankle and his right leg shot upwards. More than he would normally push it, more than was comfortable. A tense sound escaped his throat. 

“Can you be fucking careful?” Ronan snapped from close to the door, clearly anxious.

“I’m being careful with the design I’ve been given, Snake.” Calla’s retort came from somewhere behind Adam’s back, moving towards the last corner of the room.

“It’s fine, I’m fine, I’m all right,” Adam rushed to say. He was eager to silence any bickering before it could begin.

“Are you ready for the last one, pretty boy?” Calla asked, softer and still downplaying the seriousness of what she was doing with her coarse banter. 

Adam swallowed and nodded, not wanting to hear the breathy tone of his own voice out loud again. 

The slide of fabric against metal against fabric against muscle dragged in Adam’s mind. His vision felt tunneled but he still forced himself to stare down at the floor without closing his eyes.

The world tilted away from him and he found himself suspended, spread like an eagle in the middle of Persephone’s room. Through the pressure of the fabric looped around his chest, he forced himself to breathe, and breathe, and breathe, while Calla readjusted every hammock until he was properly diagonal from floor to ceiling, from head to toe.

“Maybe we should have rehearsed this beforehand.” Even Gansey sounded unsure in his posh and properly contained way. 

“We didn’t have _time_ ,” Blue gritted out, like she needed to remind herself too. “Calla knows what she’s doing. Adam is safe.”

“I know damn well, children. Everything is secured, you can come closer now.” Calla’s tone was brusque as ever, but somehow sympathetic towards their collective nervousness.

As if she had flipped a switch, they all rushed to surround him, and Adam schooled his expression through the tension of his own back when he lifted his head to look at them. 

“Adam?” Gansey murmured, so genuine and proper, so ready to call everything off if Adam were to begin to say the word.

“I’m all right,” he reiterated, twisting his right hand experimentally through the loop of fabric on his wrist. Nothing hurt, nothing really pulled. He had withstood worse. When Gansey raised his hand to press their palms together, Adam silently grasped at it.

“I’ll be right here, you know that, right?” Blue added.

She would be, of course. Her, the altar, _the bowl_. “I know. Thank you Blue,” Adam replied, wanting to smile and finding that he couldn’t. 

Right when he distantly registered that his neck was hurting, Ronan crouched in front of him, in all his scowling glory, giving him an excuse to lower his head a bit. He was as handsome and cut in marble as he had always been, roughly elegant even with the obvious tension that ran through his expression. Adam’s chest clenched under the restraints. 

God, he wanted this to be _over_ and it had yet to begin. 

Ronan’s hand lifted to comb his hair back, out of his face and freeing his eyes. They look at each other for several long seconds without uttering a word. Then Ronan leaned in to kiss him on the lips, and Adam hadn’t known he wanted it until he got it.

The breath he drew when they separated again was deeper than any he had taken in the last hour or so.

“I think it’s almost time,” Henry piped up, distracted, in communication with RoboBee to track the position of the moon outside. Adam tilted his head to look at him, and found Henry staring at him with a pensive expression. “You _can_ do this, Parrish.” He moved away immediately to go and recover the rest of their supplies as if there was no point in talking more.

Adam blinked through the echo of the words, the strange certainty of them, the calculated choice. They all knew he _would_ do this, one way or another, but Henry had stated that he _could_ as if he’d weighed the option of failure carefully before discarding it. As if he knew them both and only one could possibly apply. 

He twisted a smile, finally, around the mystery of Henry Cheng, clueless and wise at the same time. 

“I can,” he confirmed, the power of the statement surging through him. “So let’s do this.”

Blue, Gansey and Ronan all looked at him, and then scattered back around the room to comply. 

“We’ll be just in the hallway, guys, but what containment we can do is more for the outside than for the inside,” Maura told them, moving to clear the space completely along with Calla and Jimi.

“We know. Thanks, Mom,” Blue replied for all of them, a bit surer of herself as she set down the tiny round coffee table that would serve them as an altar. Gansey came beside her, carefully placing the mahogany scrying bowl on top of it.

“Got the cards, got the visual,” Gansey murmured in self confirmation, fingering the three Hanged Man cards that Blue had painted. He passed two to Henry and Ronan. Then he switched off the electric lights and the only light left in the room came from the candles.

In the back of his mind, Adam pictured the room as it fell into formation: the ten mirrors on the walls; the circle of candles; the triangle Ronan, Henry and Gansey formed with their cards; Blue standing up and Adam flipped upside down in the center of the room; the clear slant of moonlight.

He could do this. They could do this.

“Now,” Henry said, prompting Blue to hold onto the sides of the bowl full of water with both hands. 

Adam inhaled with all his might, and then let his head fall, submerging it in the bowl to cover his eyes completely, and only leaving his mouth out. 

For long seconds, or maybe minutes, there was nothing but silence ― unnaturally thick in Adam's ears, deafening him completely. Silence and darkness in front of his eyes, opened underwater. Every fiber of Adam was aware that he could not see, he could not hear, he could not move. In all honesty, he could hardly breathe, even from his unobstructed mouth.

It was claustrophobic.

It was too much.

And yet, he thought ― as he forced his muscles to give in to the bindings and his eyelids fluttered ― he would keep on. He would keep on giving until he deserved answers.

Adam Parrish knew sacrifice, and sacrifice knew Adam Parrish.

Something danced on the bottom of the bowl, a slither of luminous white.

Adam hung onto the light the same way he’d held onto magic, onto the fabric that held him and his friends together.

A King, a Mirror, a Dreamer, a Mystery. A Ghost.

_What I give, I give for this._

The light twisted in front of his eyes and got close. Then closer. Blindingly close. It burned through his pupil and then got _in_.

His body seized, but there was nowhere to go.

Adam was suddenly aware that he was watching it happen, close to his body but not exactly from the perspective he was used to. His head lifted from the bowl in a sudden jerk, water droplets flying with it and then stopping mid air around him, like an impossible crown frozen in time. His pupils shone white within the blue of his irises.

Blue, kneeling in front of the altar and still holding the bowl for dear life, almost screamed. Gansey was so pale he looked on the edge of death. Henry, incongruous as ever, let out a low, impressed whistle through his teeth.

" _Mary Mother of Jesus, fuck_!" Ronan said, the string of profanities harmonious like a song.

A smile traced over Adam's lips, outworldly and perfectly symmetrical, not touching his eyes or even all the proper muscles on his face. "Not quite, Greywaren, but you weren't looking for her."

Adam's mouth moved in time with his words, but sound echoed from all around them, bouncing through the room the same way Adam's strangely removed vision was.

 _The mirrors_ , Adam thought suddenly. _I'm speaking and seeing through the mirrors_.

"Who..." Gansey started, but he had to clear his throat, voice constricted. "Who are you?"

The shining eyes stayed fixed on Ronan, directly past Blue and her wild hair, but Gansey was not ignored. "I’m not a who, I'm not a you, I'm not a we, Raven King twice dead twice born. But the ley line will bring you answers."

Through the general shock, even Blue took a bit to murmur, "Gansey was born three times..."

"One time is irrelevant. Time is circular and reflective as a Mirror," Adam's body replied, serene and patient.

 _Wasn't your King still a King when you met him?_ the voice seemed to say. Or maybe it did say it. They all heard it, but Adam's lips hadn’t moved this time.

"I...do you...is it possible to bring back Cabeswater?" Ronan stuttered desperately.

"It would be if it went anywhere."

"But the forest is gone," Gansey argued, acutely aware of what it had taken to bring him back. For the second time, or, apparently, just the one.

"The Greywaren made it, the Greywaren sacrificed it. It was within his rights, and the forest was compromised," Adam's voice said diplomatically.

"But we asked about Cabeswater..." Henry murmured, careful in his words, "...so it's different? How?"

"Thought from a Thinker," the voice echoed, as if conceding a point. "The name of Cabeswater is the name of a knot. A knot in the ley line, a knot of power and possibility."

Henry, Gansey, Ronan and Blue furiously glanced at each other, hopeful and unnerved in equal measure. Adam’s new eyes stayed focused forward, unblinking, unconcerned.

"And Ronan dreams because of it?" Gansey pushed.

"Or the knot surfaces, beckoned by the Graywaren's dreams. It's circular," the voice explained, tranquil as an immortal faced with the trivial fretting of some kids.

"So I can...dream Cabeswater back...like I did the first time?" Ronan said, clearly thinking through his words as he said them.

"That is indeed among your powers and privileges."

"But I don't know how I did it the first time! And I can't even dream like I used to without it," Ronan protested, fired up but remarkably clear of profanity.

The mismatched smile returned to Adam’s appropriated face. “A Greywaren is a creature of faith and inspiration. You had your power when you manifested the forest, it hasn’t gone anywhere. It is you that has moved.” 

Like the words before, images glimpsed through each of their minds: of the Barns and Irish stories, of Alice wandering through the trees, of the invincibility of a father and the steadfast belief that magic existed only in the way he conjured it. Ronan lowered his gaze to the Hanged Man card he still held between the fingers of both hands as though he were caught in an uncomfortable place. In this light every one of the Hanged Men on the cards looked like Adam ― hung in a swirl of raven feathers, hung like Odin, hung like a vine.

“I thought we were done,” Blue murmured. There was a faint sheen of sweat on her brow and her eyes were glossy.

“If that’s the faith you need to keep going, then you will find enough missing pieces to convince you.”

The candlelight twisted and trembled but the shadow projected by Adam’s body remained still, a dark cross on the floor. 

“It’s hard, though, dragging stuff out of nothingness. I thought we drained the ley line,” Ronan said, voice too rigid to be calm, but too desperate not to say anything. He was obviously remembering some of the issues that they had discussed in the weeks leading up to the ritual.

Adam, from somewhere among the mirrors, couldn’t help but admire his concentration. The voice in his body rattled his tongue, sounding more like the whistle of a raven’s wings than a proper chuckle. “Your Mirror and your Magician just lit up the corpse road. Take what you need from the fire.” 

In the wake of the last reply, an ashy, hot smell filled the room. The flames of the candles thinned, dancing in tune with unfelt wind. Blue rocked slowly to the same pulse. 

“The ritual is collapsing,” Henry said, voice urgent from between an uncharacteristically clenched jaw. He didn’t leave any space for doubt, in another display of sureness, even though the moon was still clearly visible from the window. 

“You’ll want to tie a powerful knot. But the strings will only come in threes,” the voice added, unperturbed by their alarm, by the rising panic in the stares they were exchanging. 

_Crowns and birds, swords and things. Children always stumble before they learn to look up._

Blue wavered, hanging to her consciousness by a thread. Adam’s awareness of his own body was increasing and he could feel the constricting, furious beat of his own heart. The drops of water suspended around his head slowly fell.

“No no no no,” Gansey urged, not daring to move from his position and skew the energy lines, but clearly tempted. 

The three tarot cards in Henry, Ronan and Gansey’s hands caught fire, burning suddenly and spectacularly. 

“Shit!” Ronan stared at Adam and Blue with terror. 

Threads of redness began to appear in Adam’s eyes, which were losing their glow. Suddenly he was _there_ , in a too crowded body pulsing with energy, burning. His hands twisted in strained angles, to get hold of the string blocking his arms. He shouldn’t have leverage, he shouldn’t have strength, and yet he could feel the tension building as his vision tunneled into blackness, the hooks creaking from their lodging in the walls.

The last echo of borrowed Adam’s voice pierced through the sound of glass shattering around them.

“ _Noah and Persephone bid you goodbye._ ”

Adam’s hands yanked back violently.

Mirrors exploded, candles extinguished, hooks came flying from the walls.

The whole room collapsed in on itself.

  
  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *handles around energy drinks* Congratulations on completing the task of getting to the end of this chapter!
> 
> Every one of your hits, kudos, comments and messages on my [Tumblr](http://seekthemist.tumblr.com) gives me life!  
> Please let me know what you think of this Monster Chapter <3333
> 
> Only two more installments to go, I swear I'm already working on Chapter Five and this fic will NEVER be abandoned before I finish it!
> 
> Until next time, hopefully soon! :3


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